Deer Are Dirty Thieves

A few years ago, Tara & Jason gave Corinne a T-shirt with a graphic of a deer captioned: "Deer are Dirty Thieves." We've had our problems with deer in the past, but this story takes it to a new level.

We recently bought two #20 boxes of organic Jonagold apples from a local orchardist, with plans to make applesauce and any number of other wonderful apple items. Since we didn't have space in either the kitchen or garage fridges for such a bounty, I decided that we should store them on the front stoop of the house until we could process them. The weather was cool but not yet freezing, so in the absence of a root cellar I figured that this would be the best option.

You can probably already see where this is going, but bear with me for a minute.

One night I needed to get something from the garage, so I slipped on my clogs and walked down the sidewalk. It was pretty dark outside, but for some reason I decided that I didn't need to turn on the outside light. As I got about halfway down the sidewalk, I heard an incredibly loud noise on the gravel driveway right next to me. The sound startled me so much that I jumped out of my shoes - literally. My bare big toe came down on the concrete sidewalk, scraping off a good sized chunk of skin.

Once I calmed down and regained my wits, I realized that the sound was caused by several deer that had been standing in the driveway in front of the garage. They had probably watched me walk towards them the whole time and bolted away when they decided that I had gotten too close.

When I got back inside the house I surveyed the damage and relayed the story to Corinne. She laughed all the way up the stairs to get a bandage for my toe. Less than 20 minutes later I glanced out the front window to see two deer standing next to the stoop eating apples RIGHT OUT OF THE BOXES. I quickly ran outside to chase them away, but much damage had already been done. They had probably eaten or taken bites out of around 20% of the apples. And we're pretty sure that this was not their first meal out of these boxes, which is probably why the deer were in the driveway in the first place.

We did manage to salvage the rest of the apples; ironically, the deer had eaten enough that we were able to fit the remainder in the fridge.

Peering through the window, wondering what treat we'll be providing next...

- Mike, Corinne and Anders