A Puzzle

Liz and I are off to a conference today to hear David Martosko speak. Hopefully we will see you tomorrow.

Meanwhile, a funny thing happened on the way to milking the other day. Actually we were in the living room, standing up, getting ready to go out, when something large and brown flashed past the windows.


All I saw was that it was big and really trucking, but Alan could tell it was a high-speed rocket-deer. It vanished into the hedgerow. Just as we turned away to go back to putting our socks on, it flew by again, racing in a sweeping circle around the brushy field. It stopped under an old pear tree and lowered its head to eat.
And for a few seconds it ate.


Then back into the grassy part of the field it ran, pronking, ducking and prancing, and digging its face into the grass. Back to the pears. Back to scrubbing its face. Another tour around the field at racing speed, then a repeat of all actions, with some facial pawing by a front hoof added in for local color.


I was completely bumfuzzled by the weird ungulate activities, but Alan and Liz both made sense of the doe's bizarre antics immediately.


Take one deer.
Add some chilly windfall pears.
Factor in some semi-dormant, but still cranky yellow jackets napping and nibbling inside the pears.

Priceless.