Last weekend I visited my friend Kristin at her cottage on the Pamlico River. It is a beautiful cottage in a very quiet and peaceful location. This is the view looking up the Pamlico from Kristin's dock. The small island is Indian Island. So named because (you guessed it) Indians used to live there.
Directly across from Kristin in the middle of the river is another larger island where no one lives and few are allowed to visit. Folks living on the opposite side have seen a bear swimming across the river. They say he can swim quite fast. A search around the internet reveals that bears can swim at 6 mph while the record for a human is 4 mph. The take home lesson is that if you are ever being chased by a bear do not take to the water.
I also learned that in the nineties bears killed an average of 3 people a year. Lightning kills 90 people a year and dogs kill 15.
On Sunday morning I got out of bed while everyone else was still asleep and went outside with my camera. I walked down the back steps slowly and kept an eye on my feet. Kristin's steps are steep and she had warned me that she had seen a Copperhead snake on one of the lower steps just a few days before. The last thing I wanted was to fall down a bunch of steps onto a venomous snake.
When I safely reached the bottom I paused to look around. To my shock, there was a deer standing just to my left at the edge of the yard.
Instead of running away at breakneck speed, as deer usually do, he took a step closer to me and raised his head in order to see and smell me better.
Then he went back to his original plan, which was to visit the bird feeder and fatten himself on grain.
A squirrel was furious with him and chattered loudly. When the squirrel saw that the deer was not offended by his ugly language he decided to come and join the deer for breakfast.
This little buck is so tame he even walks across the boardwalk that leads to the dock. By this time I am wishing he would leave so that I could take pictures of something else. I am sitting on the bottom step and Kristin's husband Felix has come outside with his coffee to chat me up.
I like this photo best because you can't tell it is taken in someone's back yard.
When the deer finally left I retrieved my game camera that I had set out behind the bird feeder the night before. Click here to watch the video.
This is the view from Kristin's dock looking back toward land at sunset. Remember, you can click on any photo to make it full screen.
Thanks for visiting my blog. I hope you will leave a comment so that Kristin and I know you have come to see us.
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