Folks around here remember a lot of cold, snowy winters. It seems as if during every storm I hear from an old timer that: “this is nothing, you should a been here during the winter of…” However, even the old timers will say that this one ranks right up there. Somewhere here there should be a picture of my front yard if it uploaded, so please refer to it.
Lake Michigan is frozen as far as you can see with my telescope. The berm you see out there a few hundred yards are the rocks of Millicoquins Reef. As the waves splashed against the rocks they froze and marked them. That’s generally as far as we go out skiing, pretty safe inside the berm. All the tracks you see in the snow by the trees down there are deer hoove marks. This will become important in our little story in a moment. Anyway, the drift behind our little garage is about 5 foot high and the walkway has four foot snow walls from the drifts. We are enjoying snow-shoeing and cross country skiing and making the best of it, but deer are taking it particularly hard. I have noticed a doe and her yearling around our house a lot and so I started buying corn and leaving it out for them. They have been regular visitors to our house and I started talking about them to my wife a lot. It wasn’t long when she said “you know that you took an interest in these deer soon after Abby (our pet boxer) died.” That really hit me, I had said that I would never get another pet, but it looks as if I have two new ones. I was telling a neighbor about the deer, well, let’s me digress a bit and talk about that term neighbor as it applies here. This nice neighbor lives about ¾ mile away but he’s one of my closest ones. Neighbor here generally means anyone within a few miles of your house. OK, that being said it turns out he’s been feeding those two deer apples. They are regularly seen in town and along our road. He also relayed that another neighbor is feeding them sugar beets. Well, that would explain why our Naubinway pet deer look so healthy with full coats and speedy legs while other deer I have seen are looking pretty scrawny. So you see, these deer make a regular loop every day, hitting our house for corn and then the neighbors for apples and beets. Another neighbor I saw in the barber shop told me that this will be good for me, as next hunting season they will be ready for the “harvesting”, nice and plump venison. “Well, uh, nah, I don’t think so” I said. “These deer are kind of becoming pets and would be pretty hard for me to shoot them.”
I am very impressed by the tenacity, perseverance and intelligence of these animals. Our Sarah has taken a lot of pics of them and I would like to include them here but she is out of town for a few days and has her camera with her. So, maybe next time. My lovely wife said that this is all about my “maternal instinct” to take care of something. I corrected her and said I think you mean “fraternal instinct” but that’s her perspective. I reflected on that for hours, realizing that I have always had that. That’s why I went into medicine, I like taking care of living things. The same instinctual “beast” that I complain about, always having to take care of somebody, is at the same time the thing that drives me. It has been a fresh breeze in my day, helping me smile as the folks come in with their ailments, and generally seeing them get better is a joy. I hope you find something like that to make you smile today too. Stop and take a minute and find out what drives you, it’s a lot of fun. Those deer are driven by instinct to survive. That doe will do anything for that yearling and is constantly teaching it the ways of the North Woods, avoiding coyotes and wolves and logging trucks. I held Abby in my arms and petted her and whispered to her during her final breaths. I had a wet towel that I used to keep her tongue and mouth moist. We nurtured her until the end, my lovely wife and I together. I think we are all driven by some degree with the instinct to “doctor”, to nurture, we, the deer, etc., are much closer than we think, aren’t we?
Lake Michigan is frozen as far as you can see with my telescope. The berm you see out there a few hundred yards are the rocks of Millicoquins Reef. As the waves splashed against the rocks they froze and marked them. That’s generally as far as we go out skiing, pretty safe inside the berm. All the tracks you see in the snow by the trees down there are deer hoove marks. This will become important in our little story in a moment. Anyway, the drift behind our little garage is about 5 foot high and the walkway has four foot snow walls from the drifts. We are enjoying snow-shoeing and cross country skiing and making the best of it, but deer are taking it particularly hard. I have noticed a doe and her yearling around our house a lot and so I started buying corn and leaving it out for them. They have been regular visitors to our house and I started talking about them to my wife a lot. It wasn’t long when she said “you know that you took an interest in these deer soon after Abby (our pet boxer) died.” That really hit me, I had said that I would never get another pet, but it looks as if I have two new ones. I was telling a neighbor about the deer, well, let’s me digress a bit and talk about that term neighbor as it applies here. This nice neighbor lives about ¾ mile away but he’s one of my closest ones. Neighbor here generally means anyone within a few miles of your house. OK, that being said it turns out he’s been feeding those two deer apples. They are regularly seen in town and along our road. He also relayed that another neighbor is feeding them sugar beets. Well, that would explain why our Naubinway pet deer look so healthy with full coats and speedy legs while other deer I have seen are looking pretty scrawny. So you see, these deer make a regular loop every day, hitting our house for corn and then the neighbors for apples and beets. Another neighbor I saw in the barber shop told me that this will be good for me, as next hunting season they will be ready for the “harvesting”, nice and plump venison. “Well, uh, nah, I don’t think so” I said. “These deer are kind of becoming pets and would be pretty hard for me to shoot them.”
I am very impressed by the tenacity, perseverance and intelligence of these animals. Our Sarah has taken a lot of pics of them and I would like to include them here but she is out of town for a few days and has her camera with her. So, maybe next time. My lovely wife said that this is all about my “maternal instinct” to take care of something. I corrected her and said I think you mean “fraternal instinct” but that’s her perspective. I reflected on that for hours, realizing that I have always had that. That’s why I went into medicine, I like taking care of living things. The same instinctual “beast” that I complain about, always having to take care of somebody, is at the same time the thing that drives me. It has been a fresh breeze in my day, helping me smile as the folks come in with their ailments, and generally seeing them get better is a joy. I hope you find something like that to make you smile today too. Stop and take a minute and find out what drives you, it’s a lot of fun. Those deer are driven by instinct to survive. That doe will do anything for that yearling and is constantly teaching it the ways of the North Woods, avoiding coyotes and wolves and logging trucks. I held Abby in my arms and petted her and whispered to her during her final breaths. I had a wet towel that I used to keep her tongue and mouth moist. We nurtured her until the end, my lovely wife and I together. I think we are all driven by some degree with the instinct to “doctor”, to nurture, we, the deer, etc., are much closer than we think, aren’t we?
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"The purpose of life is not to be happy. The purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make some difference that you lived at all." -Arthur H. Prince
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