Man, it’s a wildlife day in the front yard. A female summer tanager is taking a dramatic splashing bath, various unidentified sparrows are on the feeder, a hummingbird is bopping around the Texas sage…and there is a deer standing in the yard.
Just standing there. Early afternoon, broad daylight, deer just…stands there. Brazen doesn’t even begin to cover it.
The mail arrived, and the deer peered down the driveway with the mild expression of one expecting a package in the next day or two. Apparently this was not the deer’s day, because the mail car drove off. The deer turned away and began picking her way across the yard. Binoculars trained on her picked up something weird about the ears. They looked freckled, or spotted, or mottled or something. When she turned her head, many of the freckles seemed oddly raised.
Googling led me to bad places involving the concentration of ticks behind the ears in deer. When you can see a tick infestation with binoculars, there is something wrong with the world. In this case, there was a LOT wrong with the world. That single deer was like a walking vector of doom. There were hundreds.
My love of gardening and dedication to the well-being of my plants is greater than my fear of ticks…mostly…but I don’t think any gardening is getting done this week.
