![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_2\/1960_baby_deer_3.jpg\")
\nThe day before yesterday, a roe deer walked through our garden with its fawn. Deer walking in the garden is no news, it happens often enough. But this was the first time I saw one with a newborn fawn this close.<\/p>\n
\nThe day before yesterday, a roe deer walked through our garden with its fawn. Deer walking in the garden is no news, it happens often enough. But this was the first time I saw one with a newborn fawn this close.<\/p>\n
After the two crossed most of the garden, I saw another fawn come out of the lilac hedge! Very cute.<\/p>\n
Then they went off across the road and that was that, I thought.
\n![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_2\/1960_baby_deer_2.jpg\")
\nToday, as I was finishing my lunch out on the deck, I suddenly noticed that one of the fawns had been lying in the tall grass under our cherry tree during my entire lunch, only 5 metres away from me. It was so quiet and immobile that I hadn’t noticed it at all until I happened to look at that exact spot.<\/p>\n
Mama deer came by a few times in the afternoon, and I saw them in a few different places in the evening.<\/p>\n
I mostly tried to stay out of the garden today. If I was too visible, I was afraid mama deer might not dare come back to feed the baby. And I wouldn’t want to have a fawn starve because of me.<\/p>\n
They left in the evening, probably to move to some other garden in the neighbourhood.
\n![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_2\/1960_baby_deer_1.jpg\")
\nDeer look cute but they are marauders when it comes to plants. No tulips would survive in this garden, and deer have repeatedly eaten my pansies in the past.<\/p>\n
This time mama deer took big bites from my strawberry plants, right under my eyes. I normally cover the strawberries with netting but hadn’t had time to put up nets for this summer yet. I’d forgotten that the nets protect against deer as well, I was mostly thinking of them as protecting the berries from birds.<\/p>\n
I quickly threw on the nets today, on the strawberry boxes as well as the one where we planted peas. And just in time – the pea sprouts are just becoming visible. If pea shoots are a delicacy for us humans, how much more delicious might deer find them? They would probably leave nothing behind.<\/p>\n
I have mixed feelings about deer. I like wildlife of all kinds, and I like seeing animals in the garden. Squirrels and hares and deer, and birds of course. I wish there were hedgehogs around here.<\/p>\n
I don’t like them eating the things I care about.<\/p>\n
On balance, though, I’d rather have a garden without tulips than a garden without deer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The day before yesterday, a roe deer walked through our garden with its fawn. Deer walking in the garden is no news, it happens often enough. But this was the first time I saw one with a newborn fawn this close. After the two crossed most of the garden, I saw another fawn come out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,22,768,779],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dailies","category-house_and_garden","category-photography-2","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12829"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13059,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12829\/revisions\/13059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}