Deer (Entry 1, Week 2)

Lately, I've been trying to pay closer attention to all the different types of animals that spend time in the woods in my back yard.  Early one morning last week, I noticed Sassy and Jade (my cats) staring intently out the window.  I got up from bed and walked over to them, curious to see what they were looking at.  I saw an adult-sized light brown deer who was eating something.  She (or he - the deer didn't appear to have any antlers, but I wasn't completely sure how to tell what gender a deer is) looked very serene, enjoying her early morning snack.

I wanted to get a closer look, so I abandoned the cats and their window view and stepped outside onto my back patio, cell phone in hand - I wanted to appreciate nature without worrying about taking pictures, but I also really wanted to get a picture to include with this blog post.  As soon as I opened the glass-sliding door, the deer's head shot up.  I thought I had opened the door quietly, but I definitely wasn't stealth enough to go unnoticed by this deer.  She stared at me for a relatively long time, maybe a minute or so.  Then, she made a strange, shrill noise I'd never heard before.  I tried in vain to find a video of a deer making a similar sound on Youtube, but I'll try to describe the noise.  It sounded like a cough mixed with a scream.  The deer only made the sound once before she ran off into the woods, leaving only the sound of snapping twigs in her wake.  

When I went back inside, I began thinking about the deer.  Questions flooded my mind.  What kind of deer was it?  A white-tailed deer?  Was it a male or a female?  What was it eating?  Grass?  Do deer eat grass?  What was that odd sound the deer made?  Was it some kind of warning cry to alert other deer of a human invasion of an oasis that was theirs long before I was even born?  Why hadn't I seen other deer nearby?  Didn't they travel in groups?  What were those groups called? And why didn't I know more about deer, anyway?  I have lived in this house for over three years, sharing this land with these beautiful creatures, yet I know next to nothing about them.  

I grabbed my iPad and did what came "naturally":  I Googled deer.  I clicked on the Wikipedia page for White-tailed deer and began scanning it for interesting information.  I'll admit that my failing attention span made it difficult for me to look up answers to all my questions, but I did discover some cool facts.  For instance, according to Wikipedia, 1 in 10,000 female deer have antlers, but it's "usually associated with hermaphroditism."  Under the communication section, I read that deer do in fact make a variety of different sounds.  After reading about the various deer sounds, I'm fairly sure what I heard was a deer "snort," a sound that indicates danger.  I inadvertently scared the poor deer.  I'm hoping to keep my eyes peeled for more deer over the course of the semester.  As I learn about them and the other animals I see, I'll update this blog.

I've included the picture I took below.  It's not professional photography by any means, but I thought it might be cool to give people some idea of what the woods by my yard looks like.  Also, I think deer are kind of cute, so I wanted to include this snapshot.