The fog this time of year is something else. It covers the fields in sheets four feet off the ground. Driving my daughter to the train in the morning, I can see over the top of the fog, and underneath. Over the top are hills with a big orange sun rising. Underneath are fields and deer.
And then a deer, um, bounded across the road directly in front of the van in front of us, bounded from the stubble of the corn field on the left, or West, to another field on the right, which was East; so abruptly that the van’s brake lights didn’t even come on.
We watched it run off. Pretty reddish-brown doe.
Have you ever seen a wild deer up close? Well, wild. How wild can you be coexisting with the suburbs like that, coming down from the hills to the fringes of human settlement, nibbling hay and corn hunters lay out at the bases of their blinds in winter. Freerange deer. Have you ever seen one up close? Those guys are in shape, I’m not fooling. Talk about lean. Like that nervous skinny kid you went to school with who was so good at track and wanted to be a drummer. Only with more fog.
Lots of deer where I live, too, Mig. Over the years, I’ve hit three while driving – so I’m always on the alert while making my way down certain paths around here. Saw a 6-point buck standing in a field yesterday just before dusk.
Driving around the other night, testing out my new speakers (woet) in the narrow twisty sidewalk-free lanes of North Berkeley, I rounded the corner and – Oh, hi there, mister deer! He was just having a little crepuscular mosey, there on the corner. The house looked like it had just sold, and had all this nice new landscaping – tasty blossoms, vitamin-rich blades of grass, and a nice knotty fruit tree just right for scrubbing that 2nd year rack.
I stopped, and turned on my hazards, ’cause crepuscular light and, yeah, fog. He looked at me, then had a walk around the fruit tree. He was precious.
Also there was the time the doe walked me home from the dental office. That was neat.
wow. we get the occasional opossum around here, but that’s about it for the wild-type wildlife.
Swell. You guys get cool deer and stuff, I get squirrels. Flocks of ‘em. Flocking squirrels. ‘Tree rats’ they are, I say.
Rats with bushy tails.
Thieving rats with bushy tails.