Dogs, deer, and mysteries of the natural world

Leaves are falling fast and piling on the ground. We wake to frost many mornings. And like last year, the deer are making their way out of the thick forests and groves to find more food.

For months, the dog and I have not chanced across a deer while out on our daily run, and I’ve been letting her off-leash for long stretches on our dirt road. Yesterday, just as we approached the first bend in the road, near the brook, we both heard a rustle and Belle took off, tearing through the woods, trying simultaneously to propel herself forward for speed and to leap higher for a better view of whatever she was chasing.

I continued to the end, which is about three-tenths of a mile long, hoping she would catch up with me by the time I reached the main road. That’s what usually happens when she sprints into the woods after a squirrel, chipmunk or bird; she realizes quickly the futility of the chase (oh that’s right, I can’t climb trees! I always forget that!) and she remembers that she doesn’t want to miss out on a run with me, so after a few seconds she’s back by my side.

But yesterday I reached the end of our road and she hadn’t yet appeared, so I doubled back. Still, no dog, so I turned and ran again out to the main road. And back. I had hoped to run two miles, and my Nike Plus mileage chip was keeping track of the distance for me, so I knew I could still get in my two miles even if I just kept running back and forth over the same stretch of dirt road. But that didn’t solve the problem of where my dog was.

Ever since we adopted her exactly a year ago, I’ve worried that someday this would happen. My concern is twofold: first of all, I didn’t want her to get lost while chasing a deer – which I was beginning to suspect was now the case – but second, I didn’t want her to be responsible for the demise of a deer. The presence of these large mammals is generally considered something of a mixed blessing in our area – though they are beautiful, they are also responsible for the prevalence of Lyme disease in our community – but I still don’t feel that it’s my place to release a non-native predator on their habitat. Moreover, and somewhat more selfishly, I don’t want to have to deal with the logistics of a dead deer: how to handle the event with children or other kids who happen by, what to do with the carcass left behind.

Up and down the driveway I ran again. Still no dog. But this time as I rounded the bend I saw something else: the white flash of a tail. I watched as a deer loped across the road in front of me. Puzzling. This deer was not moving with the speed or the frenzy of an animal being chased; it was just kind of making its way into the woods. If a dog were after it, wouldn’t it be moving a lot faster? And if a dog had just taken down one of its cohort, wouldn’t it flee the area? Though I don’t know a lot about deer behavior, I don’t think of them as altruistic (to use the actual term animal behaviorists use) animals. I tend to imagine that when one is attacked, the others take off, not hang around.

Down to the end of the road again, and by this time, my Nike Plus mileage counter said that I’d gone 2.1 miles, so I took it down to a walk and tried to listen very carefully as I peered into the woods. Still no dog. I decided I’d go home, let the town officials and neighbors know to keep an eye out for her, and just hope she turned up soon.

And this time when I reached the thickly wooded bend where Belle had first disappeared, three deer. Not running. Not even loping. Sauntering. They crossed in front of me and picked their way slowly among the trees.

It was as if the Greased Lightning gang from Grease had taken over the forest. “We’re here, we’re deer, get used to it. And we ain’t afraid of no dogs,” they seemed to be saying to me. Was it possible that Belle had indeed encountered the deer – and the deer had won?

But in any case, where was she?

My husband was driving out of the driveway as I approached the house. Knowing he had to get to work, I didn’t want to slow him down any with lost-dog tales, so I hadn’t planned to say anything. But he rolled down the window. “What’s wrong with Belle?” he asked me.

“Where is Belle?” I responded.

He briefly told me the story. As he was getting ready to leave the house, he spotted Belle, standing at the door, looking frantic to be let in. She was so quavery he thought she might have run into a swarm of bees. She repeatedly looked behind her as he headed to the door to open it for her. Once he did, she dashed upstairs and hunkered down between our bed and the wall, which was where he had last seen her.

We still don’t really know what happened. Within a few minutes after I got home, she seemed like herself again: not quavery or fearful, and not in any pain, so I don’t think Rick’s theory about bees was correct. It’s possible that whatever happened during the twenty minutes I searched for Belle had nothing to do with deer. Maybe she was quavery and fearful upon returning home only because it was the first time she’s ever run away from me and thought she’d be in trouble.

It’s a mystery that we can’t solve. Unlike my daughter, who sometimes refrains from telling me what happened with her friends at school but then enacts the whole scene while playing an imaginary game several days later, I doubt there’s any way Belle will ever express her adventure to me.

But there was one other event that seemed like it might be related. Hours later, something caught my eye through the living room window: an animal loping across the field past our house. At first I thought one of the neighbors’ horses was loose. But as it passed our house, I could see that it was a buck with a full set of antlers: four-point, I think, though I couldn’t tell for sure.

Even though we see deer frequently at certain times of year, they are usually either running through the woods or hovering at the edge of the lawn. And it’s usually female adults and babies. This was different. This was a large male running down the driveway the way a horse would. I went to get my camera, but when I came back he was no longer visible, though I could hear him crashing through the woods.

So my theory is that we have some really tough deer hanging around this fall. And it’s possible that my worries about Belle wreaking carnage can now end: either she’s no match for them or, better yet, she’s sufficiently traumatized that she’ll stay away from them now. (While animals acting uncharacteristically bold or aggressive is often a sign of rabies, I don’t think deer are considered a rabies threat as they don’t bite.) I just really wish there were a way for her to tell me her side of the story.

All creatures great and small (shouldn't be my responsibility)

Like a lot of women my age, I spend too much time feeling like World Hostess: it’s my responsibility to make sure everyone – everyone! – is happy, warm enough, cool enough, well-fed, comfortable, safe and entertained. For some of us it’s just in our nature, I’m afraid: feel like the world is your front parlor and it’s always your responsibility to ensure everyone’s comfort level.

And I’m okay with that, having lived with it for four decades. I’m used to taking responsibility for everyone who steps into my home: my children, their friends, my husband, his friends, our parents, our kids’ friends’ parents, our parents’ friends’ kids. Plus the neighbors, census takers, carpet cleaners and the UPS man. If they cross our threshold – no, our property line – I want to be sure they know they’re in good hands.

But recently I’ve been struggling with the question of where to draw the line when the animal kingdom is concerned. I’ve started taking responsibility for the personal safety of every creature on our acreage, and since we live on a farm surrounded by forests, that’s a very large number of beating hearts.

Almost a year ago, following an article I wrote on the pet-matching website petfinder.com, we adopted a stray dog from a shelter. She’s a terrific pet but she occasionally chases the five sheep who live here. Occasionally is the key word. She’ll saunter past them for months, uninterested, and then one day she’ll bolt straight toward them. I honestly believe she just wants to have some fun and experience the thrill of the chase. But I can’t expect the sheep to know that; they seem terrified when she bolts toward them, and they ignore my plaintive instructions: “Just don’t run, and she won’t chase you.” They bleat, disperse, and tear haphazardly across the fields. She never catches them; that’s not the point for her. She just wants to have some fun. But they don’t know that, and I consider it my responsibility to protect them from the experience of being sporadically terrorized.

Fortunately, the cows are large enough that they intimidate the dog, but whenever a calf is born, I stay vigilant until it becomes steady on its feet. The dog sometimes sniffs around them, curious, and usually a bellow from the mother cow is enough to warn her off, but when they’re first born the calves have such spindly little legs, and I want to make sure they never have to use those legs prematurely to run away.

And then there are the chickens. Unlike the sheep and cows, they’re not ours; they belong to the next-door neighbors. But chickens don’t know from property lines; they free-range their way onto our lawn on an almost daily basis. And I have no problem with this, except that if I see them I won’t let the dog out because, despite my hopeful question to my neighbor about whether chickens perhaps can fly, it turns out they can’t. Not even under extreme duress. So I check for chickens before letting the dog out, but every now and then there’s one or two in the corner of the yard that I don’t spot, and wild chasing ensues. Fortunately, the dog hasn’t yet caught a chicken, but I find it a little tiring to worry about them so much.

Deer populate the woods surrounding the farm, and venture often into the fields and across the driveway. In the morning, my son and I ride our bikes together the nearly half-mile down our dirt road out to the main road, where he either catches the bus or continues by bike to school. It’s not uncommon to see deer leaping across the driveway. The dog has given chase a couple of times and not yet caught one, but again, it’s not something I want to see happen, not in general and especially not with the kids around. So as my son and I ride down the driveway in the morning, I try to make train whistle noises to scare them away, which embarrasses him to no end. “Do you really think the deer know what a train sounds like?” he asked me this morning. “I don’t care if they know what a train sounds like; I just want to sound like something they wouldn’t want to be near,” I told him.

Today I drew a line in the sand, though. I opened the door, saw a flicker and a scurry, and the dog was off in a blur chasing a chipmunk that had bee foraging in the corner of the garage. As she dashed to the edge of the yard near a grove of tall oak trees, I shrugged. “Chipmunks and squirrels are officially on their own,” I announced to no one.

I can be a good host, but not to everything. Let’s say mammals over five pounds are my responsibility, plus domestic fowl. I’m happy to serve food and beverages to our human visitors and make sure the dog stays away from the non-human ones as much as I am able, but every host deserves a break once in a while. From now on, I’m turning over the care of birds (other than chickens), reptiles and small woodland creatures to a higher power.