Midday Magic

It was getting close to noon when I heard Allie clicking her tongue, as she does when something exciting is in her sights - a bird or a cat or an interesting spider.

I looked out the window to see what had caught her attention, but could see nothing there.  Allie was persistent, and jumped up on the sill to show me.

I pressed up against the window, and then saw directly below me a patch of brown fur.  Too tall to be a cat, too big to be a bird - was it a stray dog hiding up against the house?

I softly crept out the back door and around the side of the house.  And that's when I saw it.

A deer.  A teeny, tiny, itsy bitsy deer.  Not spotted like a newborn fawn would be, but also not any bigger than one.  In fact, it was much smaller than the long-legged, spotted fawns I saw near the ferry terminal a week or two ago.

The bottom edge of the window frame is only 22" from the ground.  The tips of her ears (I think it was a she - I didn't see any evidence of any boy bits), even when standing with her front hooves on one of the good sized rocks that are part of the landscaping, barely reached the frame.

And when she stretched up as tall as could be, to get those leaves above her, she still wasn't tall enough to send Eddie, who notices everything that dares trespass by the window, into paroxysms of barking.

She didn't seem at all afraid of me, though I made use of the zoom lens to keep my distance as much as possible.

She took time to smell the roses.....

And then eat them.

She hung around outside my windows for nearly an hour, before moving off to the neighbour's when I brought Eddie out to take him for his walk.

The walk with Eddie brought more magic - the coho are running and the bay is full of large fish flipping themselves high in the air.  The salmon run has brought the seals and otters into the bay and the sea lions to the islands just off shore.  One very large seal or perhaps a sea lion surfaced noisily as we wandered the seawalk, startling both Eddie and I, as it grabbed a good five pounder who thrashed mightily but could not escape.  By the time I got my pocket camera out of my raincoat pocket, both the fish and the marine mammal were gone.

Returning home half an hour later, the little deer was still in the neighbour's yard, huddled against the front of their house, trying to keep out of the rain.

She looked cold, and if she was a baby her mama was nowhere to be seen.  I checked on her twice more during the next hour and she was still there, still as a lawn ornament save the occasional nibble on the foliage. Later in the afternoon, I looked again, but she was gone.

A magical, very special day, just one of many in this paradise I call home.

Eddie:  Tomorrow's gonna be a special day too -  right,  Mama?
Me:  Right, Eddie.
Eddie:  Can I tell our readers why?
Me:  No, not yet, Eddie.  It's never a good idea to count your chickens before they hatch.
Mitzi:  Chickens???  Is we gettin' chickens?????
Eddie:  No, silly!  And if they didn't hatch, they'd just be eggs.  Nothin' special 'bout that!
Allie:  This better not be what I think it is!
Me:  Go to sleep, all of you.  Tomorrow will come soon enough.