Bungee Buck                                               

     Deer frequently traipse through our yard which once was a migration path for them.  They come in herds of a half-dozen or more and, after we put sod in the back yard, they frequently took to bedding down there for the night.  Their slumbering imprints upon the grass would leave yellow patches that took time to rebound. 

     We put a five foot fence around our back yard--which they jumped.  Finally we resorted to spraying anti-deer repellent around our mutilated plants and the ‘preferred lawn spots’.  That didn’t seem to work either.

     Our workshop has a sensor light over its’ rear door that alerts us to intruders in our backyard at night.
     At first the deer ran when the light beam suddenly flooded their faces but, after a while, they became accustomed to it.

     Still wishing for a green lawn and a flower bed, but not wanting to put up a metal gate, my husband stretched a series of bungee cords from the pole where the fence ended to the side of the house where the rear deck ended.  The wooden deck, on three sides of our home, wrapped from the front to the rear.

     One night, around one a.m., our bedroom in the farthest rear corner, my husband woke to the sound of hooves on the wooden deck trotting past our master bedroom window.  Our floodlight lit the outdoors as if it were daylight.
     Suddenly there was a ‘ping’ and the sound stopped.

     Al turned over to return to sleep though the light was still on … it automatically turns off shortly after the intruder leaves.  He assumed that would happen.  It didn’t.

     He, again, heard the clatter of hooves coming up the steps of the deck again, slow and heavy.  Racing to the window, he bent the Venetian blinds to peer out the window and watched a big, burly buck stomp past.  Then, as before, the bungee cords would stretch no further and the buck went hurling past the window to land with a loud ‘thud.’
     Fortunately it had snowed while we slept and though the buck landed quite hard, he didn’t land on bare gravel.

     Al stood, laughing, staring out the window though unable to see where the buck landed.  He waited to see if the buck would try again and his patience was rewarded when the buck, shaking its’ head, wandered into Al’s range of vision.  Walking as if drunk, the beast slowly ambled away.

     The next morning Al went outside, walked toward his workshop, doubled over laughing and ran back inside to get my attention.  As I watched out a rear window Al stepped where the buck had landed--there were two huge, separate, indentions.  Once was not enough! 

      It’s seldom that a buck goes such a L O N G way!