Big Beasts
A few days ago I went to my local liquor store to buy some beer. You can see it here, with the green awning.
To get there, I took a short cut up this path a half block from my house, as shown in a previous post.
Except this time I found the way was blocked by this creature.
You can tell it didn’t care that I was only about 15 yards away.
I wasn’t going to hassle it, so I backtracked to the sidewalk alongside the busy street nearby, only to see this one.
Lots of cars drove by, and it didn’t flinch at all.
The day before, I was walking just a block from this busy intersection, which is maybe a quarter mile from my house. I was walking on the block that is in between the building in the foreground and the apartment buildings in the distance.
And there, in the front yard of a house were these two.
This house is right next door to another house where I saw this one not too long ago.
And the truth is that they just don’t seem to care much about us at all.
This one ambled along my front sidewalk.
They’re even more common under the cover of darkness, but as their numbers grow and they get more used to people, they seem to see us as the unimpressive animals that we are. They’ve realized that my city and cities across the country are places where they can thrive.
Missouri probably has more deer than people. They’re all over!
They’re great swimmers, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they basically use the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and their tributaries as highways to open up whatever new territory they feel like.
Had two black-tailed deer in the yard this morning. Luckily, they haven’t ate all our roses yet, they are famous for that. We have boaters that have caught them swimming from island to island in our area. Bears have even been seen doing this. Most of the islands are at least a mile or 2 apart with strong currents so this is pretty impressive!
So many deer. I have to practically drive at a crawl on my way to the main road because deer are kind of knuckleheads and will stroll out in front of you.
They are nice to look at though.
They’re not so thick here, but there are places in the outer burbs where people go blasting around blind curves in the woods and that must be an invitation to get one through the windshield. That can’t be fun for anyone at 60 mph.
The first year I lived here, a deer jumped out in front of my on the highway and destroyed my beloved Honda Element. Then it got up and sauntered away. The deer that is, not my Honda.
having been run over by a deer once…i am not their biggest fan
(cyclist v deer is only ever going to end one way…..and its not with the deer losing..not even if you hit it instead of it hitting you coz oh hey meaty speedbump on my way to over there)
Do livestock there get fenced off the roads like in the US, or is it more like the UK where small roads get sheep roaming?
livestock gets fenced off….but wild deer and sheep go where they please
and with street lights being non existant in the sticks….they are a problem
you learn to fear the 2 reflecting orbs by the road side……coz its a deer…looking at you….thinking…. hey….i want to be on the other side of the road now
and where theres one…theres more
We see tracks at the park where Fanny and I walk but have only seen them occasionally.
They are normally pretty common here, but we have a bunch of road/drainage work being done in the neighborhood, and that seems to have driven them to other areas this summer.
I did see a deer bolt through two lanes of traffic and then jump OVER a lady on an e-bike last spring. Bastards can jump!
I saw one grazing outside my cabin window this weekend. We were in the mountains so it was not a surprise.
My scariest encounter with deer was when I was driving up through the same mountains in a blizzard at night and saw one on the side of the highway.
I’ve hit 2 deer at different times in my RV.  Luckily both were minor though I had fur in my bike rack after one.  I try to avoid forest driving after dark, especially on Whidbey Island or around Winthrop.  Never been either  place & not had them on side of road.