White Tails

Whitetail deer season is back - and my lot is once again The Deer Highway. The close-up (lower) photo comes from a web site - it took me awhile to find a picture showing a deer with its big white tail upright and in full view. Apparently the white underside shows mostly when they're running, or on alert. I swear it looks like a big fluffy diaper flapping in the wind behind them as they prance and leap through my field and into the sheltering forest. The upper photo, taken by me, shows a group of seven deer, at the northern edge of my lot; the group of four on the right have their tails up as they start to run off. I feel so lucky - I see small groups of deer, usually with young, crossing my lot almost daily this time of year.

This morning, during our run on a forest road just inside the forest boundary, Maia startled and then chased a whitetail deer. She stopped when I demanded "Leave it!" although I suspect she quit the chase as much out of the realization she could never catch the deer as to obey me. Meadow was preoccupied with a large deer femur she'd found a couple of minutes earlier, and by the time she dropped it and started to run after Maia, the swift deer was long gone. A little early morning excitement for us all.