We live in the country, which means we have critters visiting on a daily basis.

We’re animal lovers, which means we love them all.

Raccoons, opossums, woodchucks, chipmunks, pheasants, fox, hawks, the occasional bear, one moose….. and yes, even the skunks.

They come to nosh under our bird feeders, nibble our blueberry bushes and raid our apple trees. We love it.  And year after year, we get more deer. At times, we’ve had as many as 24 in the backyard…. which was glorious. They’re such graceful, beautiful creatures.

Of course they’ve also broke every bird feeder I’ve ever hung, which is why we started buying feed a few years ago and putting out a nightly treat.

Now before you pop an environmental cork, we are not subsistence feeding deer. It’s 2 little bowls with a few cups of sweetened grain in each. Not nearly enough to satisfy a single deer, no less a herd. They’re still feeding naturally, we don’t allow hunting on the property and neither do the neighbors, so we’re not luring them to their deaths. Think of it as an Oreo or two. They love it, and we love to watch them.

We have families with young spotted fawns, we have rugged old bucks with impressive racks and even one doe with a bum leg who we worried about the entire winter, but she survived just fine.

The herd tends to disperse in the summer and for the last few months we’ve only had 2 yearlings. But the other night we had 6.

Autumn is coming….

And we love our backyard.

🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌