“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Another Winter storm has arrived and so have the big bucks. They haven’t been here is several weeks. The snow is chest deep for them and I thought they had all gone to lower elevations and the South facing slopes. The does and last year’s fawns haven’t been around for months. The snows are too deep and the food too scarce.

I worry about these guys. It has been a hard Winter for them. Its been cold and the snows are deep. All they are eating are old oak sticks and the low branches of the junipers. I was focused on shoveling the East stairs and around the hot tub making the usual shoveling sounds. When I looked up one of these guys was watching me from about 10 yards away in the shallow snow under Grandmother Tree. “Oh, hello,” I offered and all three took off in explosive bounding leaps.

Shortly, the job done, I was back in the house. Within ten minutes big antlers appeared through a window and the first buck had reappeared under Grandmother Tree. They were after bird seed.

I know that it is wrong to feed wild animals. It is illegal.  And harmful if they become dependent on handouts from humans, but I let them eat anyway. Like I said they haven’t been around in several weeks and the Winter is a hard one. Only one buck really ate anything at all and there was still plenty of bird seed remaining when they spooked again. This time they didn’t come back and wandered off to the North pushing through the deep drifts.

Can you see the third deer?

Here he is under another large juniper tree in the background.  The snow is not too deep beneath the umbrella of these trees.

I’d much rather see this through my window than have his head mounted on my wall.