A small hill behind our backyard is the home of a few deer. I can often watch them from my studio window. It gives me pleasure watching these graceful animals quietly graze. I like the feeling of even a tenuous connection with something moderately wild (they are after all “city deer”) in the middle of a concentration of humans. I know some of my friends are enraged when their hostas are sheared off or their tulips are nibbled down to the ground. Some people would just as soon shoot them.
Last Winter, three deer, a doe with a badly mangled hind leg and what appeared to be two of her fawns, inhabited the back hill almost everyday. The lame doe got around okay. The hill, which has old apple trees on it, and the field behind it seemed to be enough to sustain her and her offspring. We know there are many more deer around the neighborhood. A herd of 12 or more was recently seen crossing the street and running over a neighbor’s lawn. But the doe and her two fawns were content with our back hill.
Along with the deer, we have a dog — a three-year-old Australian Shepherd. Paco is a good boy, but last winter he learned he could jump over the four-foot fence that encloses our yard. When we have a lot of snow, it piles up against the fence. So, when we noticed that he could practically walk over the top, we shoveled the snow away from inside the fence. But evidently the snow pile on the outside of the fence looked like an easy reach for an Aussie whose genetics have given him the ability to jump on the back of a steer.
On a bright snowy Sunday afternoon, I heard my nephew yelling that Paco had jumped the fence, and then I heard the frantic barking. I pulled my boots on and grabbed a leash. I could see the dog and the doe on the hill. I climbed over the mounds of snow and into the small field below the hillside. With every step my leg sunk down in the deep snow up to my thigh. I struggled to reach the hillside and screamed at the dog — a useless thing to do when a dog is over his emotional threshold.
I finally got close to the two animals but not close enough to grab the dog. The doe was standing. When she put her head down it looked like she was going to charge; the dog backed up. She looked terrified. The dog was in a frenzy.
Then suddenly the deer bolted with the dog in pursuit. She fell in our neighbor’s yard. The dog kept barking furiously but was still staying at a distance. I got close to the deer, but still not close enough to catch the dog. The doe looked at me; I looked into her large-black eyes wishing to God that she knew I was trying to help. She struggled to stand and once up limped toward the street. Paco’s herding instinct kicked into full gear. He kept circling her and moving her forward until they were both in the middle of the street. When I approached, they both moved quickly to the next yard.
The deer fell again. This time into a snowbank. The dog still barking and jumping wildly got very close to her this time. I leaned over and grabbed his collar. He jerked his head up, painfully twisting my fingers in his collar. I was able to get the lead on him and pull him away. The deer extracted herself from the snowbank. I watched as she slowly hobbled away. The dog was still on an adrenalin high as I walked him back to the house.
For the rest of the Winter, Paco was closely supervised and on a long lead when in the yard. He has a lot more training in his future.
I watched for the deer every day after the incident, hoping they didn’t show up again for their sake. The dog-deer encounter exploded my vision of a bucolic backyard and ushered in again thoughts about our relationship to wild things. We so want to be near them, to see them, to experience them but only on our terms. When they intrude on our world, the one we’ve pushed them out of, the one we’ve built on and inhabit, the clash can be painful — mostly for them.