Visitors

18 July 2011 A young doe was nibbling the grass along McFarland Drive. We stopped the car because if she had suddenly decided to leap across the road, this would be a different story. She paused in her munching to look at us, her big ears erect, tail wagging. We rolled down our windows. We were almost near enough to touch her. She kept on nibbling, not the least bit afraid of us and our vehicle. She was used to them zipping by all day and maybe she’d been taught by her mother to stay on that side of the road. A woman jogging by sent her high-tailing back into the woods. We didn’t drive on. Instead, we watched her, half hidden in the brush until the jogger passed and then she strode back to her salad by the street. She seemed glad to see that we were still there. She stood and greeted us again, big eyes focused and brave, big ears saluting, and the tail wagging and when we talked to her, she didn’t run away. For David and Gerard, city boys, it was a treat to meet the beautiful creature which, until then, they’d only known as road kill. Jude Roche Warwick