the herd

The house you see in the background of the photo below is where our neighbor, "the deer lady", lives.  You've heard of crazy cat ladies before, right?  Well this particular older, divorced, apparently lonely lady has found her own brand of crazy.  She feeds deer.  I'm not talking about a salt lick or a few table scraps.  She feeds the deer at least twice a day and usually in a bathrobe (I have seen her in at least 4 different bathrobes-an impressive collection!).  Buckets of food.  Potatoes, carrots, white sandwich bread, and buckets of some sort of feed that looks like sawdust.  And so it is that we have a resident herd of domesticated deer.  There are certain characters.  The patriarch with the red ear tag.  The mama who had the tiny spotted baby in June.  The "unicorn" (named by my mother) who has one antler that points straight down.  They wait at her patio morning and night for their rations.  She talks to them.  This may all sound like exaggeration, but I do a lot of dishes each day and my kitchen window looks out to her deck.  The deer lady's house has very little property.  The stone patio in the picture belongs to different neighbors and it is newly (and expensively) built and landscaped.  The deer like to sleep in the  flower bed.  If it were my patio I would not be pleased.  But as worried about these deer and annoyed with this neighbor as we first felt...I kind of get it.  We sort of like the herd.  It is fun to watch them and their presence is some what reassuring.  But I'm still not talking to them or passing out slices of bread...