Living Lawn Ornaments
We have seen plenty of wildlife on this trip, sometimes after putting considerable effort into finding it. In Port Townsend, we don’t have to look very hard. The wildlife is all around us.
Black-tailed deer, which are native to the Pacific Northwest and are the black-tailed form of the mule deer, seem to be everywhere. They are particularly fond of the forest-edge habitat of western Washington and a town like Port Townsend provides many things the deer like: shrubs, gardens, lawns, patches of wood and relatively easy movement between them. Does and fawns wander through yards, bucks browse beside houses, and deer appear along the streets. While I have seen many deer statues placed in yards as lawn ornaments, you can not beat the real, living animals instead.
The bucks caught my attention because I don’t see them nearly as often as does and fawns. Their antlers also looked a little whacky. It turns out August is a good time to see antlers in various stages of development. They are still covered in velvet, the soft-looking tissue that carries blood and nutrients to the rapidly growing bone beneath it. Black-tailed deer have branching, forked antlers while they are growing. Some of those racks look unfinished. One buck we saw had particularly lopsided antlers like one was growing out of the side of its head, perhaps the result of an injury while they were growing. He will shed the entire rack this winter and begin growing a new one next year.
Perhaps the deer have simply lived among people long enough to figure us out. We watched a doe and her fawn cross a downtown street in the crosswalk. Living lawn ornaments, yes. But, apparently law-abiding ones.
Linda Burek Photography 
Linda the deer are all over Whidbey Island. My sister said they would be underneath her bedroom window all the time and snort which drive them crazy
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