One of Our Wild Neighbors

Post date: May 16, 2016 9:57:26 PM

We are not the first people to have built a house and live on our beloved little piece of land - in the 1800's the land was homesteaded, and there was a stagecoach stop and a post office with a small - very small! - settlement called Apricot. Not much remains of it now, even the artifacts were apparently taken away long before we bought the property. But it has been a long time since humans lived here. So, we still encounter wildlife, large and small, and some even come close to the house. This young blacktail deer, for example - you have to look closely to see his small antlers - came off the hill west of the house, we think on his way to some containers we keep, just southeast of the house, for water for the birds and other animals. These deer are pretty common in this part of California but we don't see them this close to the house very often. Occasionally they come closer to get acorns when the acorns drop from the oaks near the house. And, I expect the deer come in much closer at night, when we have the dogs inside, to reach over the fence and eat dahlias, honeysuckle, and whatever else plants that taste good and I struggle to raise.