Current Event: The deer and the peahens

My husband and I ride our bikes almost every day. We have a regular route that we take that gives us six miles. There are those that think we were pretty much weenies for only doing that much for mileage, but it has a couple of hills in it, and at least we do the ride! The other day, on our usual route, one of the hills that takes us near a park, is residential, and backs up to the park. It is an interesting street as the deer and the people coexist very nicely, and there are a lot of deer. The last month has seen the arrival of fawns. So on our recent ride, we noted one yard had about six or seven deer in it, including maybe four fawns. The house owner was tossing apples to the deer, and they were partaking nicely. We watched for a bit, and then rode on up the hill. My husband had been taking deer pictures with his handy little camera, and having taken quite a few, up the hill we went. We take a drink at the top, and then we start back down the hill. Mileage, mileage! More deer were walking leisurely across the street both ways.

My husband said to me, 'wait, what is that?' Across the street among the deer traffic were six peahens, squabbling to each other, sounding like a bunch of demented chickens, and the deer were reacting like they had never seen such a sight before! We slowly drifted down the street on our bikes, and then stopped across from the peahens, who were up the curb and in the grass pecking around a tree trunk, and ignoring the deer. The deer reacted to any movement on the peahens part by leaping backwards or wheeling in the air, but not going far from the peahens. The peahens just kept cackling and pecking and moving slowly toward the woods.

We watched for awhile laughing at the sight, and observing deer behavior, who were not paying any attention to us. I think we could have walked right through the whole group of them and they wouldn't have noticed us. It was a case of existing or being invisible to the birds and the deer. Ah, how nice it is to know there are places that this can happen. Someone will get perturbed and put a [stop to it] I am sure. One can only hope not. If I weren't afraid of the dark, I would creep up into that park to listen to the night noises by all that is living there. Or I could take one of my Fairy Dust Balls with me, which by the way, don't seem to be doing the glow that was promised. Probably why they were on sale in my Gardener Catalogue. I am such sucker for anything that says fairy!

Now I have introduced being afraid of the dark, which is not entirely true but I do suspect there are creepy crawly things out there after dark. Especially at 9500 feet in Colorado. There are bears, foxes and coyotes. Well, there coyotes here in my place in Washington by the water. Every once in awhile you can hear them ky-ying to each other as they cruise Skyline looking for stray puppies, and locked out cats or rabbits. But not for awhile. Be safe peahens, and sleep well small fawns. My fairies will look out for you.