Susie the Doe can eat Michelle’s hostas any time — just don’t tell her husband
I love deer. My husband loves hostas. So when deer ate my husband’s hostas, I made a really bad joke.
“Hosta la vista, baby!” I told Mark, as he stood, hands on hips, surveying what was left of our backyard.
Goodbye landscaping. Hello bare patches. I think hostas must taste like ice cream to deer. Even doused with deer repellent, their creamy green leaves retain their flavor. During the day, a small herd dines on underbrush in our woods. Come sunset, they tiptoe over to our yard for dessert.
I think the deer are beautiful. My husband thinks they’re a nuisance. And so, we compromise.
“You have to shoo them away,” Mark said.
“I will,” I told him. “All of them but her.”
My husband knows who “her” is — and he knows to treat her with kindness. She’s a sweet-natured doe with a God-awful limp. I think she must have been hit by a car a few years back and healed up broken with a will to survive.
“I feel so protective of her,” my neighbor, Clare Schmitz, told me via Facebook. “I haven’t seen her in a while. I’m glad to know she’s in your yard. Sorry she’s eating your hostas. Tell her to come visit us. I’ve been throwing some watermelon in the woods for her.”
“Don’t you wish we could talk to her like Dr. Doolittle?” I responded. “We could hand-deliver anything she wants for dinner — with the exception of Mark’s hostas, ‘cause those are pretty much gone.”
Clare calls the hobbled doe Susie. Her children call her Mama Deer.
“She had twins a couple years ago,” Clare told me.
My heart burst with pride at the thought of Susie as a mother. Little did I know, a few days later, I would get to witness her parenting skills first hand.
On Tuesday, a pair of recently-born fawns zoomed around our yard, as Susie slowly followed behind them. She nibbled some plantings. I didn’t shoo her away. I’d serve her hostas on a platter if she’d let me.
When you live near woods and a lake as we do, it would be easy to take wildlife for granted. Deer, foxes, raccoons and, even minks, regularly pass through our property. A great blue heron likes to poop on our dock. I remind my husband the animals were here long before we were. It is not our right, but our privilege, to live here.
‘The struggle is real’
An avid outdoorsman, Mark appreciates this fact — but he also appreciates the hard work he put into our landscaping. The struggle is real. And it is one he is losing.
“Susie had babies!” I announced, when he got home from work.
Then I showed him a video our son, Sam, filmed through a window. In it, the twins raced through our yard, passing naked stems that used to be hostas.
“Pretty neat,” Mark said, “and the best part is they didn’t stop to eat.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him all that running made them hungry.
This story was originally published June 27, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
