Oh, deer!

I apologize in advance for all the wildlife (real "wildlife", not crazy-kid type) pictures you are about to see. We live on the edge of a ravine and enjoy the variety of critters we get to see in our backyard that don't make it into most city neighborhoods. While I do enjoy watching our groundhog(s) daily in the spring and summer, wintertime is my favorite for the ravine. We can see right through it now and when the snow falls it is just beautiful. We can also see the deer, even if they are all the way on the other side. The other morning as I was at the sink I looked up and saw this:

There were 7 of them around, finding their breakfast in our garden and paying close attention to the sounds of people up and about. They were looking across the way until I went over to our sliding glass door (the one with the giant hole in the wood by the handle and huge gap between the panes) where they must have heard me talking to Myka because they all turned at the same time to check out what was going on behind them.

Later that same day there were a few more around in the garden and Tetley was even outside. He ran at them and they did nothing so he just went on his way sniffing and marking. It appears they are not so skittish in the afternoon.

This evening as I was making dinner and Kurt was on the phone, we looked up to count 11 between our yard and the neighbors. As they moved between the houses we went around front to see where they were going. This one stopped to take a bite:

He is literally 2 feet from me, nibbling on the bush right outside our front window. The blurriness is from the window screen. Tetley got a little excited with this one being so brave and scared him away after this, but I managed to catch the "school" of deer headed down the street on video before they were out of sight. Myka is trying to decide which one is the teacher. Apparently she figures any groups walking in a nice straight line to get from one place to another must be headed somewhere with their class.