Just how smart is that deer?
Especially active in October, the enigmatic animals roam Annapolis in abundance
When an animal looks at you, it’s so tempting to see intelligence in those peering eyes.
And so, on a recent Saturday afternoon asmy wife and Iwere rattling around the house, I had to wonder what the buck staring into our kitchen windowwas thinking.
Itwasn’t just glancing casually while on the lookout for predators or food, itwas a deep dive for checking us out. Antlers held aloft. Dark, round orbs separated by rusty felt locked on us.
“Hullo, deer,” I said. “Howdo you do?” The deer, keeping secrets as animals do, said nothing in return.
Plenty of deer roam our neighborhood at thewatery end of the AnnapolisNeck Peninsula, and they are never more active than in October.
Theweather is nice and food is abundant. Deer graze on almost any plant, with a demonstrated fondness for suburban landscaping. It took years for me to realize that the hedge splitting the boundary with the neighbors’ yard has been trimmed, nibble by nibble, just above the reach of a stretching deer neck.
Deer showed a particular appetite this year for our Thomas Jefferson plant, a transplant grown fromseeds plucked for us inKentucky by a chatty, generous cousin ofmy wife’s. We let it vine its lavender flowers and magenta seed pods right over the speed limit sign at the corner.
Now, acorns litter the ground, and even though most backyard gardens are emptied of tomatoes and cucumbers, kale and the odd squash do just fine.
The deer at our windowjust might love black sunflower seed best, patiently pulling them fromthe bird feeder with a probing tongue. We can seewhy our seed is gone every morning afterwe load up.
Hunters will tell you that a buck in October sleeps late into the afternoon, then spends a little time hanging around other males. Maybe there’s some sparing and marking before theywander off in search of dinner with a half hour or so of daylight left. Then it’s a night full ofwandering free to eat.
They head back toward their favorite spots at dawn, bedding down to spend their days in cover doing what deer do in thewoods and marsh.
So, why did one stop on this daily routine and look intomy kitchen window? I’d like to believe therewas thinking going on behind that gaze.
I knowinmy heart that looking intomy dog’s deep brown peepers will buy me love. Rooster can’t speakwords, but I understand what he’s saying anyway. We perceive theworld together, each gaining from what the other sees.
Or, if you prefer, his attention is the result of natural selection mixed with a century of animal husbandry. Dogs do well with humans because they are social by nature, attentive to the signals and habits of those around them. It’s why they knowan easy mark for a snack or a belly rub when they see one.
A lifetime with dogs may give insight into what theywant, but I understand that
humans imbue canine expressions with meaning beyond what might really be there. We judge the intelligence of animals at a crossroads of observation and intuition, where belief is given equal weight to fact.
Dogs, after spending 10,000 years close to humans, undoubtedly misinterpret the world just aswe do, fitting it to their experience and desires.
A colleague who has birds rather than dogs views his cockatiel with the same blend of affecting and rationality.
“He seesme as his companion who could give him a scratch, some seed or bounce him up and down,” he said. “I’m also a big scary human who could level him if Iwanted. So each look is a measure of: will he give me the thing hewants and will this person hurt me.”
Some of this is helpful for figuring out what that deer inmy windowwanted.
They are intelligent animals if you consider a keen sense of smell, good vision and acute hearing to be signs of smarts.
Or, that’s natural selection again. The wariest bucks and does tend to survive the longest, passing along whatever genetic traits made them survivors.
Then again, deer live in our neighborhood because the threats are small and becausewe are at lands end. As devel
opment eats up the peninsula, there’s not much farther to go.
Our window-peeping deerwasn’t frightened of us, maybe becausewewere familiar. Deer learn what to fear, and what to dismiss as uneventful.
A few days earlier on a morning run, my dog and I came upon a buck— was it the same one? The markings and the rack of antlerswere the same, but it’s hard to knowfor sure.
Hewas grazing on a lawn just after the sunwas over the horizon.
The buck looked up andmy dog and I stopped, transfixed by something wild. Then the reddish-brown male took a few steps closer.
Thatwasworrisome. It’s early rutting season, and deer hyped on hormones can be aggressive. Charging with antlers might not be intended as fatal, but it would be decidedly painful for a 62-yearold human attached to a small white dog by a leash.
He took another step forward, then stretched out his black, wet nose to sniff and give us a closer eyeball for just a heartbeat longer.
And then, keeping secrets as animals do, he bounded away across the grass, white tail flagging a morning message easy to interpret: Goodbye.
Wewere left to divine the meaning of it, man and dog tethered by a leash and our joined perception.
Rooster looked up at me, peered meaningfully intomy eyes, and said:
“Well, thatwas an awfully big squirrel.”