My husband and I were out on Sunday, giving our two cats some supervised play. He takes our girl, the Mighty Jenga, as she likes to roam and he’s got the touch on keeping her in check. I don’t know if the discipline is real or imagined, but from a kitten he’s treated her like he’s training a dog to behave. They roam the property with her off-leash and him making sure her delusions of grandeur don’t get out of hand. He also keeps a sharp eye out for dangers she might not recognize.

I was on the porch off our sunroom with our boy, Mister Twister. Twister is a timid male who is content to stay close to home, roll around on the concrete, and occasionally paw at whatever bug wanders close enough. He doesn’t do much (unlike Jenga), so I may not have shared a picture before:

I was sitting on the very stoop above, when suddenly Twister crouched and froze. Following his gaze to my right, the male deer we call Doofus (technically, Doofus 3.0) had crested the front hill, maybe 20 feet away. He stood right off the porch, as surprised to see us as we were him. We all just sort of held position for a few seconds. I could tell it was Doofus by his behavior, as he’s been coming around all summer.

I picked up Twister and went inside, Doofus watching us go. After I went out the back and let my husband know not to let Jenga circle around to the front and to use the bedroom slider to come in, I grabbed the camera. Doofus was already availing himself of the Ringel amenities:

I noticed how smooth, hard and pointy his antlers were right away. Being an obsessive Research Girl, I looked up more deer trivia:

• Deer antlers start growing in April/May but the growth really takes off over the summer.
• Main beam and points fully form by the end of July but they are still covered in a soft coating called “velvet.”
• In September, the bucks rub their antlers against trees to get rid of the dead velvet to reveal the hardened antlers underneath.
• This is in preparation for mating season, commonly known as “the rut,” which peaks in late October to mid-November.

So, Doofus has been getting his antlers ready to show off, fight for dominance, and all that jazz. For comparison, here are his antlers from my Just Saying Hello post on July 23rd: