In my last DT post (Who’s Watching Whom), I mentioned that the estimated deer population in Wisconsin is 1.825 million. That’s a lot of deer, and a lot of them seem to not only live in our valley but love to visit our yard fearlessly. I think one of the reasons might be we don’t own a dog. Our house is very quiet. We routinely see ovals of matted grass on our front hill and know we’re a favorite overnight spot.

Sometimes we look out the bedroom window at dusk to find a sleepover.

When we first moved here, we were constantly fascinated by the difference between “seeing” an animal and “experiencing” one. I’d seen a lot of deer in my life, but here I experience their lives and discern their personalities like I never have before. The fawns are especially interesting. Some are timid and cling to their mother. Some are adventurous and a real handful. This one wandered down our porch and by our sunroom alone one day, sending us into a panic when his mother was nowhere in sight:

I have had to research garden plantings that are deer-resistant, as you might imagine. The picture above is my overhauled perennial bed. I can report that coneflowers, balloon flowers, sage, silver mound, black-eyed susans, yarrow and allium (flowering onion) have all passed the hardest deer test possible. On the other hand, when I dug up what had been the overgrown front garden, I found a lot of Asiatic lily bulbs and since they were free I replanted them. If the deer don’t eat the flowers as soon as they come up, the 13-lined ground squirrels eventually do. But the lilies come back every year, and since the bulbs were free I don’t mind if they are relegated to snack status.

The most deer we’ve seen together was well over a dozen. It was an usually warm day near the end of winter and a herd came out of the woods and decided to hang out on our sunny front lawn still covered in snow. The younger members caught a case of the “zoomies” and dashed back and forth and round and round for minutes on end. The older members stood around watching, like parents at the playground. Apparently even deer get spring fever.

Finally, the bucks are something to see. Before moving here, I never knew male deer shed their antlers every year, typically in late winter. We don’t see too many bucks with impressive antlers right on the driveway, but it happens:

I’ve read that male deer don’t participate in parenting, so this fawn must have been very young for Dad to still be around. This might be the same fawn from above, so maybe the extra parenting was necessary.

We’ve lived in the Driftless Area for five years now. These days, we have to stop ourselves from taking the deer for granted. They are ubiquitous here and yet, if we stop to watch, we end up with a new unique memory.