Nestled among trees, sitting atop a mound the Indians used to rove, and deer made their
beds lies the house I have called home for the past 17 years. Deer are not a fan of humans,
especially during hunting season, and my county is known for the highest number of deer
shootings during deer season. Not only are they not a fan of them for that, but for the land
humans have demolished and developed.
That was probably a common consensus among the deer population when my family
began building our house. Trees were knocked down, dirt pushed out of the way, to make way
for the humans. Upon moving in, we always had a picturesque scene waiting for us in the
mornings or late at night. Deer would be munching on grass, nuts, and berries they found in the
woods or field. Sometimes they would come alone, in pairs, or even in numbers as high as 30.
The first year we had a set of triplets. How cute the babies were when they would run in circles,
chasing after one another. Their mother always kept them in sight; she did not trust the humans.
The deer grew and ran off to other places. New ones populated the area and with every
year the population decreased, but the damage did not. The deer became familiar with the people
tramping through their old home. The humans got a furry, white as snow puppy who lived in the
garage most of the time. That little snowball was not big enough to scare them and no one had
shot them yet, so they dared to figure out what was around that house.
The deer began gnawing on the peach trees my dad planted just down from the woods,
but 50 meters from the house. Then, the rhododendron leaves disappeared beside the shed at the
side of the garage and before long not a single fruit could mate before the rascals plucked them
off. There are many tricks in gardening books to get rid of the pesky deer, but not even the soap
on a stick trick worked.
If you wanted the apples off the apple tree, you had better pay close attention because if
you waited one day too long, the deer would have them all. Snowy, the furry, little white puppy
grew up and moved outside. Her pen sat among the fruit trees the deer feasted off of. That
ferocious bark of the once little puppy scared the deer for quite a few years. You could still spot
them bedding in the woods when the leaves had fallen and the snow began to fly. They would
chase through the field out front and some nights when I was walking on the path through the
field to a basketball game, you would hear the deer snort.
The deer became familiar with Snowy. They knew she was fenced in and could not get
them, so back they went to eating off the fruit trees. We had a garden every year. I have helped
my dad hoe the rows and plants the seeds since probably the summer after we moved in when I
was four. The garden became a better food supply for the deer than for us. As the years
continued on, we got an electric fence to try to keep the deer out. This last year we had five
electric wires about four feet high, yet the deer still managed to jump over the fence and eat the
long, fat green beans that were hanging off their vines, ready to be picked and cooked.
This was all out war. Any idea was going to be tried out. We spent hours every night in
the garden and end up wasting lots of money to feed the deer. One of our neighbors through the
field already lays food out for them at night; they don’t need anything else to spur the growth. It
was not long before the deer started eating the flowers out of the flower pots I plant every year.
At the end of summer 2010 the deer had eaten a portion of the three flower pots in the
front of our yard, along the driveway. The pots full of pink calibrochoa, white petunias, and
purple verbena were down towards the field, and that was along the line they would run
throughout the night. In the winter, a path is tracked through the freshly laden snow by hundred
of hoof prints.
The summer of 2011 started out well. The deer did not touch the garden for the first
month. We added another electric wire and my dad continually charged the battery, so the
electric charge would be at its greatest if they tried to force entrance. Perhaps they got used to the
zap or maybe they weren’t getting zapped at all. The perfect beans and peas that were bright
green with not a tear on the leaves were suddenly chewed to the bottom of the plant one
morning. I sensed anger when my dad walked in the house and told me we would have to replant
them. I did not even have to ask; I knew it had to be the deer.
Replanting we did and soon we were replanting tomato plants too. One idea came about
that perhaps if the deer thought there was someone in the garden, they would stay out. We put a
portable radio in the garden and turned it on for the night. The radio was not coming in that clear;
the antenna must have needed tightened. The next morning I awoke and heard something
outside, but I thought I must have been hearing the TV downstairs; it was probably coming
through the vents to the upstairs. I walked outside at 7 a.m. to take my morning run. I started out
the garage door, stopped and listened to a song playing nearby. It was not just loud, it was
downright blaring. Instantly I realized it was the radio in the garden. I could not stop laughing.
Who would think to put a radio in their garden? We were desperate. We did not have neighbors
immediately beside us, but the closest neighbor we did have lived through the woods on the side
of the garden. They must have heard the radio sometime throughout the night because I think
their bedroom is on the side of the house towards our garden. If anyone heard this music, they
must have wondered what the crazy Beabout’s were doing.
I decided to leave the radio on; I would turn it off when I got back from my run. My dad
goes to work early, he could not have missed the sound, but must have not thought it was not that
bad that he needed to go out and turn it off. This kept the deer out for a night or so, but they are
intelligent creatures and realized the sound would not hurt them and were back munching on
vegetables soon.
I loved the deer. I was the only person in the house that said how cute they looked. The
rest of the family would watch them, but I don’t think they cared if they were there or not. My
bathroom is at the back of the house, facing the woods, and every morning I get ready I enjoy
looking for the deer hiding behind the trees or bedding in the brush. They play with your mind
some days, as you see movement, but can’t find out where they are because they blend in. My
opinion of them started to change that summer.
We had hypothesized in the spring about their being a fawn somewhere nearby because
we saw a doe basically every day. She mostly stayed at the side of the woods near the garden,
but sometimes would be on the opposite side of the house near the brush pile. My curiousity was
egging me on, I desperately wanted to go into the woods and look for the baby. Fawns were so
cute, especially with their bright, white spots, stumbling around trying to learn how to walk. If
you know anything about animals and their young, you know most of them are very protective.
Deer are very much about taking care of their fawns. So, I decided I would wait and see if the
fawn came out of the woods, rather than get attacked by its mother.
One night Snowy saw a deer and using her normal instinct she started to run after it. The
deer Snowy was chasing turned around, stopped, and glared at her. My dad said he thought for a
second the deer was going to chase after Snowy. There must be some sort of communication
between animals because Snowy stopped, turned around, and walked back to the house.
My dog does not let anyone in her yard. She is the ultimate guard dog. The lane for our
driveway is kind have long and she spends most of her days sitting on the sidewalk or in the yard
under a tree, so she can see to the end of the drive. If anyone pulls in, even to just turn around,
she is up and barking. When you come up the drive, she greets you. If you’re a girl, come to the
door. If you’re a guy or drive a UPS, FEDEX, or AEP truck, you should probably question
whether you want to get out and risk yourself. For some reason she does not like guys outside of
my dad and brother. We do not know if she was beaten when she was a puppy. The fur on the
back of her neck will stand up and she will repeatedly bark with a deep tone until you leave or
someone comes out to get her.
Most people think when they see a dog they should put their hand down and try to pet it.
Snowy thinks you are going to hit her when you do that, and she in turn flinches and acts like she
is going to bite you. There are times when I can calm Snowy and convince her to go lounge on
her bed on the back porch and there are other times when she is going to figure out if she wants
that person on her property or not.
I could not believe Snowy she actually turned around and went back to the house after the
deer stopped. That was totally out of her character. A week or so later I was cleaning the back
porch. We still saw the doe consistently, and I was leery of letting Snowy outside if I could not
have my eyes on her at all times. She has always enjoyed hunting for mice in the field. You see
her prance and pounce, prance and pounce and come back shaking her catch like she shakes off
after getting wet. So, for the most part of my cleaning she stayed on the porch with me.
I was almost done and decided to let her out. Of course she would go to the side of the
woods where we thought the deer was bedding. I watched her sniff the ground, wagging her tail
while walking around. I went back to my cleaning, only to look up and see Snowy smelling or
eating something in the woods near the pile of leaves where we deposit what we rake in the fall.
Right behind her was a doe. Without even thinking, I bolted through the porch door. Screaming
at the top of my lungs, sprinting at full speed, I ran to her rescue. The doe attacking Snowy from
behind flashed through my mind. My blood pressure had to have gone from 60 to 200 in a matter
of seconds. As I rushed to a halt, the deer quietly stepped in the woods out of sight. Snowy knew
nothing that was going on other than me being in a state of hysteria shouting her name at a pitch
that even her old ears could hear without any hesitation.
Snowy was getting older and had lost some of her hearing, but she could still smell. I
could not believe the the deer managed to quietly track behind her. For some reason, she did not
smell the deer and that may have been for the best because had she smelled the deer, Snowy
probably would have got excited and tried to go after it, in turn making the doe fight back.
Snowy followed me back to the house and she stayed on the porch with me for the rest of
the cleaning. I was still trying to calm myself down as I hugged and petted her. She was basically
a member of the family. I was unbelievably thankful the deer did not attack her because I have
heard stories before of deer attacking hunters, runners, and animals. It was a story to tell at
dinner that night, except I could not wait for dinner to tell it. I blurted it out upon my dad
walking in the door, probably telling the story so fast that he could not understand what I was
saying because every time I thought about it my pulse went back to its increased form with my
heart pounding.
The deer disappeared for a while. I went back to school, so I didn’t know how frequently
they returned. One night I had just got off Facebook, with the first post when I signed in being
my brothers -“A deer just ran through my house.” Scott was known to be a trickster. I did not
take a lot of things he posted on there as facts. I was his sister, the girl who was supposed to be
invisible outside of our house. My phone rang, it was my dad, and he said, “We had some
excitement at the house tonight.” I immediately started laughing; asking if what Scott wrote was
really true. My dad had no clue what I was talking about because he doesn’t have a Facebook.
He proceeded to tell me a deer, indeed, did run through our house.
It was just after dinner, the sun was still shining, and my dad was mowing in the back of
the house near the fruit trees and dog pen. He glanced down at the back porch and saw a doe
standing by the grill. It was unusual to see the deer out so early, especially so close to the house.
That morning my mom looked onto the front porch to see flowers scattered on the ground. A leaf
here, a blossom there, the flower pots were destroyed. 17 pots and I thought the ones on the
porch would be the safest, but clearly I was wrong. My mother and brother argued over whether
it was the deer who at them, but he insisted she was crazy. Little did he know he would find out
how crazy she wasn’t. My dad made some circles around the house, looking for the deer, and
checking to see where Snowy was. The deer disappeared; he thought it must have gone to one of
the neighbors. He was now mowing around the pines that lined our driveway. Out came Scott
and my cousin, Garron, waving their hands while sprinting towards the mower. Scott raised his
hands to make a buck representation, putting his hands out from the corners of his head. Dad was
shaking his head, he had already seen the deer, but it was a doe. The boys continued to holler at
my dad, which aggravated him because he could not hear what they were saying due to the sound
of the mower. Finally he idled the mower and said, “Yes, I saw the deer already.” The boys were
in no mood for jokes, Scott replied, “I don’t think you saw the one that just ran through our
house.” I would have loved to seen the look on my dad’s face.
Hypothetically, we think the deer circled the house on the side opposite of the garage.
Snowy was more than likely sitting on the front sidewalk at the corner of the garage. The deer
probably saw her, got spooked and looked for his easiest way out. That day was rather warm, so
the front door was open, leaving the screen door to see through. The back door, which is almost
totally glass except the wood border was open as well. The screen sliding door was pulled shut
and through that you could see through the screen window in the porch. The deer probably saw
the woods through all of the screens and thought he had a clear shot to freedom from the harry
fur ball. In he went through the screen, around our living room leaving muddy hoof prints
behind, on to the year-old wood floors in the kitchen, scuffing a few of the boards and bolting
through the back screen door so hard it busted out. He must have landed on one step and flew
through the screen window.
Nothing was touched in the house. A glass vase and picture frame sat on a half wall
beside the back screen door, and a wood decoration was perched on the porch right below where
he jumped out. They were not knocked over or broken a bit. Thank goodness we had not put the
glass back in the front screen door because he probably would have shattered the glass and bled
throughout the house.
Scott and Garron were upstairs when this all took place. They heard clump, clump, clump
and thought someone was falling down the steps, but they didn’t go look because my mom
wasn’t home and my dad was outside mowing. Their excuse was they thought the loud noise was
Longaberger baskets falling down the stairs. Sometimes my mom’s baskets get knocked over and
on the way take out other ones on downfall to the hall. The sound stopped, and then they heard it
again. This time they decided it was not normal to hear that sound, and checked to see what
happened. The deer was just leaving its temporary residence when they came down the stairs.
No one believes us when we tell the story, but we still have the proof of the torn screens.
It remains a joke at our house. When you hear someone at the door and there’s no one there,
someone automatically says it was the deer, trying to sneak back in again.