In a Rut

As I walked up Alton Parkway this morning a little after 8:30, I saw a whitetail buck cross the street about half a block ahead.  As I continued up the street, a doe came toward me across one of the large lawns.  Soon I saw another, and a half grown fawn.

It is deer mating season, the rut.  It would be unusual to see deer out in the neighborhood this late in the morning at other times of year, but this is the second fall in a row that I've seen bucks in this area, which is several blocks away from the more secluded Sligo Creek Park.

I'm just a couple of blocks from our house, and it wouldn't be surprising if these were the same deer that have feasted on our hostas, tomatoes, and strawberries over the summer.

As I watched them, alternatively browsing and looking around, I thought about how simple their existence seemed, but how similar it was to mine at the core.  To survive, they need to get enough to eat, and they need to be alert to their environment and avoid harm.

We have devised entire systems of production and distribution to efficiently deliver the food we need, so that we can consume it during relatively short, regular meal times.  But if that wasn't the case, we would, like the deer, be intently focused on where the next meal would be found.

The deer are alert to danger in their environment.  The biggest threat to these urban deer is one that they are least equipped to deal with -- the speeding automobile.  But they are still very alert to the sights, sounds, and smells around them, and their innate, protective fear is readily apparent and motivates much of their behavior.

Likewise, a great deal of our behavior is motivated by fear.  We have controlled our environment to limit the natural hazards, but we replace them with internalized fears.  Fear of failure, fear of making the boss unhappy, fear that we will miss an opportunity, fear of being left out, fear of being alone.  There is no end to the general and specific fears that we carry in our psyches.

After a car passed, one of the does noticed me and became a little more agitated.  Soon the does and the fawn moved off through the shrubbery and jumped a fence into an empty lot.  As I walked farther up the street, I passed by a patch of bushes and trees that had hidden the buck from my view.  There he was, out in the middle of the yard in full daylight, his normal wariness mostly overcome by the hormones pushing him to mate -- the imperative to avoid danger replaced by the imperative to reproduce.  Another car came by and turned in the driveway.  The buck trotted off in the direction the does had gone, and I continued on my walk to work.