“Doofus” is the name my husband and I gave the first deer who figured out our house is a great place to pick up a snack meant for birds and became a regular patron. Doofus 1.0 was brazen about it:

We called him Doofus because we kept trying to shoo him off with “Doofus! Get away from our bird feeder!”

Of course, over time we’ve surrendered and just enjoy the visits. Most deer just drift by but a few become regulars. Once they start looking at us like we’re neighbors, we start using the name. I’ve drawn the line on buying “deer food” as I don’t want to make 200+ lb animals dependent on us, but that doesn’t stop them from coming. We do bring our feeders in (although that was about bears) and try to time loading our feeders to miss the morning and evening visits.

Doofus 2.0 was an especially tenacious guy who came by all the time:

This summer we have Doofus 3.0. His antlers were just nubs when I first noticed him coming by. He’s learned when my husband loads new bird food and when I go fill the water bucket (a.k.a., the “deer bucket“). He’s pretty much made himself at home:

This is the same deer I posted a picture of a couple weeks ago in Just Saying Hello if you want to compare about two weeks of antler growth. I’m curious how long he’ll stick around and how big they’ll get.