Deer Sighting
Sugar and I see pronghorns (antelope) at our ranch nearly every day. Sometimes we see whitetail deer in the hay meadow. I have encountered elk while riding a horse in a canyon at our neighbor’s ranch. Once we saw a moose by the highway while driving to town.
Last weekend we saw wildlife in an unusual place.
We had stopped in a little town in Wyoming, Medicine Bow, population less than 300 as I recall the sign said. We parked in front of a church. We got out of the truck to stretch our legs. Sugar walked up the street toward a house next to the church. It had a fenced yard.
“Look,” she exclaimed, “They have a pet deer.”
I looked. Sure enough, there was a deer laying in the back yard. It was very still. I told her it was a statue. She pointed out that it was chewing. Sugar quietly approached the fence. She wanted a better look. She has a way with animals.
Suddenly, the deer rose up and jumped over the fence.
“Dang,” I thought, “Sugar scared the pet deer out of the yard. Those people will be upset.”
But there were no people to upset. The house was vacant. There was a foreclosure notice on the door.
Then Sugar noticed something else. There were twin fawns emerging from the garage to join their mother. The mother deer and her babies had made a home in the unoccupied house.
The foreclosure notice indicates that those deer had not made their mortgage payments for awhile. Deer can be very irresponsible financially.
Shootin' the Breeze 