Like a Good Neighbor....

So, this morning I’m afraid that I did not endear myself to my neighbor. In case anyone lives in a less redneck location, today is the first day of deer season. Keeping that in mind, I brought my poodles outside for a little walk then an game of fetch (using Tempi’s new squeaky tennis balls. She loves them). So, I’m standing by the windbreak behind the barn so that I can throw the ball down a hill to hopefully wear the poodles out, when I see my neighbor and his buddy, decked out in his orange finery, walking the property line between my place and his.


The hunters stop. The look at me (probably because Tempi was viciously squeaking her tennis ball), then look out into my field behind where the horses were previously pastured. Then they look at me again.

My buddy, the buck, whom I met over the weekend, was standing there staring… probably at the tennis ball squeaking poodle.

Now, I first saw this buck on Saturday. I was dismantling my electric fence, winding the electric rope around an old tomato cage to keep it neatly stored, when I heard a snort that sounded like a surprised horse… not quite as powerful as Opie’s “keep away from my stall” snort, but along the lines of London’s “I feel good with my tail over my back and I want to play” snort. Since my horses aren’t home anymore, I ignored it.

And I heard it again. And again. The third time I heard it, I looked up, and low and behold, there was a big buck standing probably 30 yards from me in the middle of my field. He stared at me and snorted another three or four times, before taking two of those graceful leaps sideways, stopping to snort at me another 4 or five times, then slowly walking to the tree line to the north side of the pasture. What’s with the wild life in this place? Jerks.

Back to today…

The hunters looked from me to the buck a few times, obviously wondering if it would be kosher to shoot the thing even though it was in my field. In the time that they were mulling it over, the buck moseyed off again into the north tree line, away from the hunters and still on my property.

Buck, you’re welcome though I really don’t think that this is going to endear me to my neighbors.