Street lessons

Deer, like pigeons, spiders, and rats (this last, unfortunately), somehow adjust readily to urban environments. I've seen them in downtown Greater Vancouver, tripping unconcernedly across the street. Here in Campbell River, they browse in vacant lots, in neighbourhood gardens, in the weeds beside the highway.

Yesterday, coming out of a store, I met a doe and her fawn beside the parking lot.

The youngster still has his spots. And what big ears they have!*

This street is one of the busiest; there's always traffic. Just across the street, the machines are busy, tearing up the soil, preparing to build something large. A side alley leads to a parking lot, crammed with workers' cars.

And Ma Deer decided to take her youngster over there, away from me and my car.

Fences everywhere; no escape but by the street.

She stood on the side of the street, watching me, watching her fawn, watching the traffic, until it was safe to cross. Her fawn followed.

"Okay! Coast is clear; come on, kid!"

They crossed the road quickly, went towards the parking lot, then veered into a bit of bush, the fawn a few steps behind his mother all the way.

It was like watching a human mother teaching her kid to cross a street; good parenting, Ma Deer!

A store employee, going off work a minute later, told me that there's been a small family of deer among those trees across the street. She was glad the fawn is still fine.

*(I erased a couple of distracting cars out of that first photo.)

Decisions, decisions!

My grandkids were visiting, and we were coming home from exploring Woodhus Creek, when we met a deer family, two adults and a fawn, beside the road. The kids got out of the car and walked over, and to my surprise, the deer looked at them and went on browsing.

I stayed in the car, taking photos through the windshield.

The larger adult, looking well fed, chewing a mouthful of greens.

The fawn, and, I think, the mother. She's skinny, as if she's been nursing her baby.

Mother and fawn

The girls were sensible enough to keep quiet, move gently, and not approach too closely. The fat adult moved back into the bush, came up against a chain-link fence (visible in the top photo), and returned to go on with his meal. But the mother was nervous, and after a few minutes, she crossed the road, where the bush went on, without barriers, all the way down to the river.

She waited. The fawn tiptoed timidly out onto the road, and almost all the way across, before he started to wonder if this was the right thing. Here he was, halfway between one adult and the other, and not sure where to go. Neither of the adults moved to call him.
We humans all held our breath.

Which way? Which way?

(Aren't those the cutest little toes?)

Thinking it over

Eventually, the fawn went back to his starting point. The mother dithered, debating her next move. Back across the road to her fawn? Or stay there, on the path to safety, calling her baby to come on? She couldn't make up her mind, and we were not helping, just being there.

We loaded the kids back into the car and drove on.

Luckily, no other car came down the road, hurrying around the blind corner ahead, while the youngster stood, doubting, on the centre line.

We were here.

Spotty baby

A curve or two from the end of one of the outlying roads I've explored, there is a wide, park-like field up against the hillside. There is usually a deer or two grazing under the trees. And today, one of them was a fawn, still wearing his baby spots.

The fawn is a lifer for me!

The doe saw me, but allowed me to tiptoe, hiding behind tree trunks as often as possible, half-way across the field before she took her baby off into the bushes.

Made my day!