Showdown in Rabbit Meadow

Posted on June 28, 2017 by TJ

The morning dawned cloudless and beautiful, but clouds gradually moved in throughout the morning. As predicted, rain moved in during midafternoon, beginning with sprinkles and gradually getting harder. However, the heavy rain that meteorologists said we could get–up to 2 inches–shifted south of us. at 2 p.m., to be exact. That’s really bad news for mid-Michigan, which has already had flooding from storms. In fact, there was so much flooding in Bay City, Michigan, on June 23 that fish were swimming along the sidewalks.

I wanted to get the mail before the rain hit, so at about noon I headed down the driveway. I was within sight of the small meadow near the bottom of the driveway that we named “Rabbit Meadow”–because we’ve seen rabbits playing there–when I looked up and saw a Mama Deer with two little fawns standing at the edge of the meadow, just coming out of the trees. She had already noticed me and was on alert. I immediately froze. She took a stomping step to warn me off, and then took another stomping step, watching after each step to see what I would do. She had taken maybe a half-dozen of these stomping steps when I slowly began backing away from them up the driveway toward the house. I had my camera in my pocket and wanted so much to video this encounter, but I was trying to limit my movements, hoping that I could back away without spooking them. Finally, Mama exploded into movement and bolted across the driveway while the fawns ran back into the woods. I gave up my plans of getting the mail and went back up the driveway into the house so they could reconnect.

Experiences like this is why I call our place our Enchanted Forest, and why I absolutely love living in the country.

A couple of months ago JJ bought two bug zappers that look like tennis rackets. They are easier to use than fly swatters–and much more fun. All we have to do is wave the racket at the insects and when they come in contact with it….ZAP! JJ calls me a sadistic killer–mostly because I was thinking of using it on the billions and billions and billions of grasshoppers in our yard–but he enjoys zapping bugs too. EJ and I agreed that if we see the zapper rackets at the store, we are going to buy some for ourselves so we don’t have to borrow JJ’s. He said they were only $5.