Deer!

[Deer in photograph is closer than it appears. Click for a larger deer.]

As a city kid, I will never tire of seeing deer as they make their rounds about our neighborhood. Elaine and I recently devised another daily walk, which goes from a street to a trail to a road to a path cut through a meadow of wildflowers. All public property. The meadow is billed as a park, accessible only on foot (no parking). Day after day, we’ve seen one or more deer on the trail, road, or path. And they’ve seen us.

Can deer recognize individual people as individuals? We’d like to that this deer can. It doesn’t bolt when it sees us, and it’s seen us (we think) many times. (The little bits of color on its right side match up from photograph to photograph.) Sometimes we’re the first to move on; sometimes the deer is. It’ll mosey into the woods. And then we start walking again.