Thank you Dennis that was lovely to read, I'm having a rare very pain day and your post about nature really picked me up.
I too love nature, possibly also to extreme but I don't see any problem with that.
Keep these anecdotes coming, they probably help a lot of people.
Mand
OK here is another nature anecdote.
Back in 2005 while visiting my brother out in Oregon I had a couple of encounters with some deer.
My brother lives on a mountain in southern OR with a 2 mile drive up a dirt road to get to his house. As I was heading to town one morning I had only gone about 1/4 mile when I came across 8 deer standing in the road ( more like his driveway ). As I drove slowly forward they just stayed in the road until I was right in the middle of them and I had to come to a stop. They just milled around my car looking in the windows for several minutes before just slowly moving off the road to let me pass. If my windows had been open I could have very easily petted them I'm sure. They were that close to my car. :)
The second encounter was on another trip to town from my brothers house. I was down on a paved road that was straight and level for about 2 miles. I had only gone about 1/4 mile down this road when a large buck walked out onto the road and just stood in the middle of the road. He stood there just watch me and also looking down the road in the other direction. I finally had to stop as the buck just kept standing there. Once I had come to a complete stop a doe and 2 fawns walked across the road and once they had gone into the field on the other side of the road the buck finally moved off the road following the others. To this day I can't get over how that buck was acting like a school crossing guard. :)
Dennis
Wow that buck was really looking out for the others!
We had a particularly hard winter and I guess that is why we were regularly seeing deer quite close to the city (for food I imagine) - the problem was they were regularly near a very busy road, they could have done with your crossing guard to help them out.
Mand
I know the folks with Lyme have a legitimate dislike of the deer, but I still find them wonderful to watch - it always lifts my spirits to have an encounter with nature like you've described.
thanks for the quiet thoughts today,
L
Dennis thanks for your stories I enjoy them very much!
They have cut down all the woods around us so in the morning you can see a bunch of deer in my front yard. They also jump into our chain link fence. One day a neighbor asked me to rescue a fawn who had been stuck in a neighbor's fenced yard all night. Poor thing had been hitting the fence all night. I got him out.
My husband is a cyclist and one day a group of deer came out of the woods surrounded him and ran with him riding in their midst. He said it was so quiet and spiritual.
We have a mini nature preserve in suburbia. We have bats in the eaves, I pile up brush around the trees to attract wildlife. I have seen hawks come down and catch critters. We have harmless snakes. We have all kinds of birds at the feeders when the deer don't eat all the bird feed. They tip the bird feeders.
Because I worked in a wild life hospital all the neighbors call me when they have a wild life concern.
Oh and if you go to a certain apartment run off pond at dusk and are quiet you can watch the beavers.
I will post some of nature my photos
Alex
First of all thanks for posting your pictures, they were a real lift to my spirits. :)
As I stated earlier I am a nature lover to extreme and this story points it out real good.
This occurred while I was in the Navy on tour off the coast of Vietnam. My ship ( a destroyer ) was scheduled to go to Australia for a few days of R&R but had been diverted to Japan due to a typhoon ( hurricane ). On the way to Japan we were caught in the outer bands of the storm with high winds and 35-40 foot waves. This was my first experience with a hurricane so naturally I had to get a better experience of what it was like.
I grabbed my 8mm movie camera ( yes I'm that old :-) ) and head up to the signal bridge. This is the highest deck on the ship and is completely open to the weather. Slowly while holding onto the railing I inched my way to the front of the signal bridge fighting the 50-60 MPH wind. Once there I wrapped my legs around a post and took out the camera and started filming the wave breaking over the bridge ( 1 deck below me ) with the spray going over the top of my head. After about 15 minutes of filming I was getting really tired from fighting the wind so I again slowly made my way back to the safety on the interior of the ship. But I loved every second of the experience and probably would do it again if given the chance.
When I got back to the US I would proudly pull out that movie I made to show friends. Every time I would show it the people would tell me I was nuts and that just watching it would make them sea sick. I lost that film many years ago due to some minor flooding I went through, but that is another story. :)
Dennis
My father and brother both loved storms at Sea and would write letters about them.