Jeanne Ryan’s Widlife Adventure, Out My Front Door

Even living in Duluth going on 13 years I still stop and star at some of the beautiful wildlife you see in the city, and the other day was no exception.

We live in the city of Duluth and on the rare occasion I get to see a beautiful majestic bald eagle, some hawks and many times lots of deer. We live in a heavily populated area and to this day it still catches me off guard. With all the cars and trucks flying by it amazes me more of them do not get hit.

One deer in particular, which I have named Barb has been seen daily wandering around our neighborhood eating bushes, grass and leaves. She is always by herself and I know it is her because she has a white tuft of hair on her hind leg right on the joint. She is very brave in that she does not seem to get startled very easily, and the other night she was in our neighbors yard.

As we sat out on our front stoop she slowly started coming closer and closer and started eating some grass on our lawn when all of a sudden she caught the sight of our cat Jasmine. Our cat is an indoor cat, but occasionally she sneaks out of the house and remains outside until we can catch her and bring her back in. Barb the deer was very intrigued and had quite the stand off with her for about 5 minutes, slowly walking towards her. At one point she made a kind of grunting noise as our cat seemed oblivious, so I decided to step in and swoop up Jasmine.

Many of my co-workers laugh when I tell them that I have a deep respect for deer and have seen on T.V. when a rogue deer stood on his hind legs and was batting away at some poor guy with his front hooves. I did not want the same fate for our cat or me for that matter. Barb the deer went on her merry way after her fun little creature was gone, but next time it will be interesting to see how much closer she will get as she zooms in on our hasta plants.