Beware the Deer

This past weekend was the annual Youth ski trip. This year, we went to Winterplace in Ghent, WV. For lodging, we stayed at Pipestem State Resort Park in cottages. Pipestem is about ten or fifteen miles from Winterplace as the crow flies. It’s a forty-five minute trip as the Big Blue Bible Buggy drives, though. Still, once the sleeping accommodations were worked out, there was no complaining.

Out the back door of the boys’ cabin was a small deck about a foot and a half off the ground. Beyond the deck was a ten foot clearing, then trees. The trees only went for about 40 feet to the left half of the cabin before there was another clearing for the golf course. To the right half was the beginning of a deep, wooded ravine. Saturday morning, one of the boys went out on the deck and said there were deer. I went out to take a look, and over the next couple of minutes, a group of twelve deer started appearing from the golf course in pairs. They rummaged through the leaves looking for food and paying no mind to the fact that they were being watched. One of the boys who had come outside went back in, then came out again with a cinnamon roll. He tossed it out into the leaves. Two of the deer moved closer to the deck and started digging through the leaves to see what was dropped. We all went inside before seeing if it was found.

The next morning, I walked out onto the deck as the sun was coming up. There were three deer just past the tree line. They started moving to the right as more deer came into the trees from the golf course. When there were seven deer present, they started moving up to the edge of the clearing around the deck. They stood there staring at me. They didn’t move. They didn’t look for food through the leaves as they had the morning before. They just stared. Eventually, four more deer came off the golf course and within a few minutes, all eleven deer were standing in the trees at the very edge of the clearing, doing nothing but staring at me. After a few minutes, it got to be too much for me to handle. I went back in and shut the curtains.

I learned a very valuable lesson this weekend. Never feed the deer. You’ll just end up feeling like you’re living in a Stephen King novel.

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