So, the deer in our town have never seen so much misery. In the half mile walk from my house to the horses, nearly every morning produces a dead deer, usually hit by a car. This morning, there were three on my walk. Yuck. In all the time I've lived at Newman Lake, I've never hit a deer. In fact, in all my life, I've never hit a deer (or had a deer hit me). Until this winter... My poor car has never seen so much front end damage. This year, I've hit 2 deer, my husband one. When we moved to Newman Lake, the "old timers" told me I wouldn't be a true Newman Laker until I hit a deer. Eight years later, I guess I belong. So this brings me to the mystery:
Out where the horses are, there is a gate at the far end of the pasture. We don't use the gate and the horses don't go down there because there is still two feet of snow on the ground. Saturday morning, when I went to feed the horses I saw that the gate was flat on the ground. What? How could that be? Because I was in my running shoes and didn't want to wade through the snow, I sent Robbie out to set it back up. He said the metal post was bent flat on the ground, but he was able to set it back up. This morning, I walked out there again, and the gate was again flat on the ground. I walked out to investigate. (Turns out, the snow is a frozen crust, so I could walk on it in my running shoes!) There was fur all over the ground, the chain link portion of the gates was bowed in and the post laid flat on the ground. Next to the gate was blood and further down, under the trees a partially eaten dead deer. Sad.
So, why was my gate pushed over two nights in a row? And what is pushing my gate over? Will it happen tomorrow? I don't know the answers. By the way, I checked for tracks, but the snow is too deep and melting to quickly. There were deer droppings and moose droppings... and lots of gray fur...
