Our Friendly Neighborhood Deer

We get to have Bo come over every Wednesday night while the Jebyoungman goes to mutual. Let's hear it for church callings! After we make her clean our kitchen, make or provide our dinner, and then help put the kids to bed, she usually thinks it's time to leave. On one particular Wednesday night, after breaking free of the childrens' grips and making it out the door, she turned around and came right back inside. "Forget something?" I helpfully asked. "Nope. I can't leave. There's a deer in front of my car." So the kids flung open the front door to see the deer. And you know what? That crazy deer came right up to them! And then followed them around for the next hour, pushing it's head into their chests begging to be touched, and smashing it's nose into Hudson's for kisses. Thank goodness Leah had already fallen asleep or you would have been able to hear her scream all the way at your house.

It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen.

We kept telling Hudson not to jump or run because it would scare the poor deer off. But, being Hudson, he just couldn't help but to jump and run, and that deer seemed to love him the best. She followed the kids up and down the street, walking amongst them like she was one of the pack. We had to keep the front door closed because she kept coming up on the front porch waiting to be invited inside. See? Weird.

Hudson and the deer with the same look on their faces

The next morning she spotted my little herd on their way to school and followed them down until they reached the busy street. She caused quite the controversy in our neighborhood. It seemed half the people were frantically calling animal control or the Division of Wildlife, and the rest of us were wanting her to just be left alone. Half were saying she must be diseased or hurt to be coming up to people like that, which really didn't make sense to the other half.

A few days later someone had her visiting their backyard, and we haven't heard from her since. Too bad. It was a great experience. Maybe we should look into getting a deer of our own.