Drought & Deer

Posted on July 19, 2009

While there are neighborhoods near us that are known to have deer in them, ours is not among them. We’ve had deer come through at night, while we slept. Usually we knew by their droppings and the fact that they ate some of our plants – they like hibiscus but aren’t fond of red tips. The only time I saw them was if I happened to look out the window in the middle of the night. Really, I only saw one in the nearly nine years we’ve lived here.

Usually, signs of deer were an indication of a lack of rain. Well, this part of South Texas is under severe drought conditions now. Two weeks ago, we spotted a deer and her fawn crossing a street around 8:30 in the evening. Very rare. But last Friday morning, the same deer and fawn took up morning residence in our back yard. (For some weird reason, our house and our neighbors house have no fenced in back yard.) This morning, I was able to capture a picture of the momma deer. (I was in the house taking pictures between the slats of our blinds so as not to disturb her.)

She appeared to be guarding her fawn that was asleep in the back yard. Then I spotted a white cat on the fence. About the time that the cat jumped to the ground, the momma deer became alert and turned to see what happened. Here she is, the white spot near the fence is the cat.

She then went after the cat, wanting to chase her away from the fawn. She stomped her feet and probably snorted to chase the cat away.