Sacre bleu

Every night one of us takes a flashlight outdoors in order to lock up the poultry and collect the eggs. Tonight, as I was doing this, I caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye.

It was a green reflection: a pair of eyes. A deer. I held up the flashlight and saw more pairs--three, maybe four. And then I started panning around the perimeter of our open acreage.

There was a 180-degree panorama of deer eyes.* They were everywhere!

I approached each cluster of animals, waving the flashlight and shouting. One group included two fawns. All were unafraid, and I had to get within 10 or 20 yards to chase them away. Once a group that I had chased away returned and had to be chased a second time. In all, I counted at least 14 deer. The number may have been as high as 20.

Welcome to the next generation of marauders...

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* One pair of eyes appeared 20 feet in the air, on a tree branch. On further inspection, it turned out to be a raccoon--which is a good thing, because if deer start climbing trees, we are all screwed.