I got back from my long Saturday trip around 3AM this morning. I pulled into the driveway and cut the headlights. I got out of the truck into the pitch black night. The streetlight was out again and I had to fairly feel my way to the gate.

As I opened the old gate into the main yard, I paused as I heard a snap of twigs and a rustle of brush. I waited for my eyes to adjust and I was startled to see a shape coming out of the darkness. There have been rumors of black bears and I was rightly nervous about it.

A dark body passed by me and then another. As my eyes adjusted I could see a small herd of white tail deer walking by me, slowly. They didn’t seem to be afraid of me and several passed so close that I could have reached out and touched them. A mother with two fawns passed me by. A fawn’s dark eyes looked up at me with a certain wonder that creatures like me could exist. I returned her gaze.

There were about a dozen deer, led by a large buck. They grazed in my un-mown lawn and from time to time turned their heads to inspect me. I closed the gate and went up the brick walk to the dark house, passing between them.

Deer are nervous and shy and run when they see a man in the daylight, but these white-tails didn’t seen to be afraid of me at all. It was as though they were used to large men walking in their herd at three in the morning. Maybe they sensed that I lived here, too and that it was my yard as much as theirs.

Call me Deer-Walker.