Dang deer!!

There once was a lovely young Dogwood growing down by the redwood trees. Granted, its placement was not so good..the redwoods forcing the little dogwood to bend towards the sunshine, but it did bloom there and was a bright spot in an otherwise dark part of the yard.
Wednesday night I came home from work and saw that the dogwood was leaning more than usual and was looking rather tattered.



On closer inspection it became obvious that Tripod had been using it to scrub the last of the velvet off his considerable antlers. The little tree is completely girdled and will not survive. Too bad he didn't scratch his itch on that stump of a pine tree not 3' away!

Venison is beginning to sound like a treat....even though I don't care for the taste. Jerky perhaps. Grrrrrr.

I feel sorry for the deer. They have been pushed away from their traditional grazing areas along the river by the human penchant of building starter castles with huge walls around their perimeters. ("We want to live near 'nature' but we don't want it to bother us")
The deer have moved into the subburbs and have taken up residence where the neighbors don't have WALLS around their properties. Though I'm happy to give them a safe place to live, I am worried about the population. Currently there are two does, 3 fawns, and Tripod-the-buck spending most of their time on this 2.5 acre property. The does and the fawns do travel to neighboring lots but Tripod can't jump fences anymore so he's here 24-7.