This past Wednesday, we had an unexpected visitor: a white-tailed deer.  It was a young buck about four feet tall with small two-point antlers.

Our property is enclosed by a six foot high fence, which you can see in the background.  Both the front and back gates were closed and there were no loose boards or holes in the fence.  The deer had to have jumped the fence to get into the yard. 

I found out about the deer when I went out on the back deck to see why our two Jack Russell Terriers were making so much noise.  They were harassing the deer and chasing him along the back fence.  At first, I thought a large dog had gotten into the yard, but soon realized it was a deer.

Our back gate opens onto a busy four-lane highway that runs along the back of our property.  Once I got the dogs safely in the house, we called the town police for help since opening the back gate to let the deer out would be a real hazard to both the deer and the traffic.  And I didn’t want to open the front gate and have the deer running amok in the neighborhood.

Two of the town’s finest showed up in short order and decided it would be best to try and get the deer out the front gate.  So we opened the front gate and the officers tried to herd the deer out the front gate.  Unfortunately, the deer would not cooperate. He ran toward the open gate, but always turned back at the last moment.

As a result, Plan B went into effect.  They would open the back gate and one officer would stop traffic on the highway and the other would herd the deer towards the back gate.  They got all set up to coordinate their activities, but lo and behold, the deer had disappeared.  We assumed the deer had jumped the fence or had made his way out the front gate while nobody was looking.

We did one more test to make sure the deer was really gone.  I let the dogs out and they went off following the deer’s scent, but found nothing.

Or maybe this was just the ghost of Bambi haunting our back yard!