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I have been laid up for the last several days due to back problems (note to reincarnated self: don’t break any bones as a kid) Because of that, I mostly listened to the local talk radio which was pretty depressing.
Anyway, I missed one of the high points of late Spring — the first cutting of the hay. Our house is bordered on one side by hayfields. The sad news is that a small fawn was killed by the mower. This has happened before and I suspect that Mom’s rule to freeze and blend in needs some tweaking for the modern “predators”.
The fawn was about 30 yards from the house and we didn’t really notice it until we saw a large bird working at it. It was a young Bald Eagle! We have seen them before, but mostly soaring and not so close. During the day, we also saw a juvenile and a mature bald eagle. At one point, there were two, mostly mature eagles close to each other and chirping away like smaller birds. It was an amazing thing to see and would have been so easy to miss.
I guess no matter how grim things seem, there is always something to raise your spirit if you only look for it.
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Bald eagles used to fly pretty close to our previous home. At one point the landed and were walking around our neighbor's yard. I had never seen one on the ground. The gray feathers on their legs make them look like they are wearing pants. They are a sight to behold. They are very large. Bring in the small children and dogs.
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Sorry to hear about the little deer. It is a shame that the person doing the mowing didn't have a way to ascertain that no young animals or bird nests were in the field.
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The hay is maybe 3-4 feet tall and the fawns really blend in. I know the mower really feels bad and tries to watch out. A couple of years ago, they left an unmowed island around a Wild Turkey nest all summer
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I wonder if the kids I went to school with, now regret the various broken bones from snow skiing and water skiing and running-backwards races and all the other stuff they did. That I didn't.
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It's good to know the turkeys were protected.
My own "sad deer" tale, except it has a happy ending.
Maybe ten years ago, on one of the really, miserable hot days we have here in Lake County Calif, I walked out to the back fence.
Our back yard is heavily treed, and very shady. So when it is about 103 degrees everywhere, it is maybe 92 degrees in the yard itself.
But I often check to see if some of the watering troughs we have out in the open need re-filling.
As I surveyed the open space there, I saw a shocking thing! Someone had apparently shot and killed a huge magnificent buck. His antlers might have been 14 points or more. He was not much smaller than an elk.
The creature's entire body was not there - just his shoulders, neck and head. I was surprised that anyone who had killed a deer out of season would leave the shoulder meat behind. They must have also decided to dig out a trench so when they left his bust behind, it would sit there like some grotesque statue.
The animal's tongue was splayed out over his lower jaw. His face looked in agony. I had no idea who to call or what to do - I didn't want such an immense amount of a carcass rotting in our part of the world.
I felt so much shock. Although many of the neighbors are hunters, they all abide by the hunting season. One man even recounted to me how he has always snuck away from bears that have noticed him, when a lesser person might have just raised their rifle and fired.
So who did this?
Anyway thinking how horrid this was, I started to cry a little which caused me to sneeze.
As I let go with a loud "Ach-oo!" the torso swung its head. The legs and hooves that were buried deep down in the cool earth pushed against the depths of the trench. Then the whole magnificent animal rose up, snorted at me as a scolding for ruining his beauty nap, and slowly trotted away.