A morning suprise

I am a morning person. Even on cold mornings like this week, it is my favourite time of day: peaceful and full of promise. That does not mean however, that I am fully awake by the time I get out to do morning chores.

Take for example the day Phelps showed up: my sleep deprived brain tried to process if he could be ginger, Amarillo, or even a Coyote...but even that tired my brain could process that none of the above would be nearly that rough looking., and so I called Rob to inform him we had a guest...or that I was hallucinating.

Rob got a similar call this morning.

My routine in the morning is to leave the house before 7am with the dogs, then go to the hay shed, and take hay to the geldings (even though they have a round bale, I like to put out some flakes for them). As I was spacing out the hay, the three geldings that overnight in that paddock, wandered over, but I could see a dark shape laying in the snow my the horse shelter closest to the barn.

At first I thought it could be a horse, but then realized all were accounted for, then I thought maybe some poor beggar lost his blanket, but no, they were all clothed...which is when I called Rob "either I am hallucinating, or there is a deer sleeping in the horse shelter".

So I walked around the shelter and got closer (remember it is still dark at 7am), and saw Phelps snorfling in the snow just outside the fence, and sure enough, there was a critter laying in the snow by the horse shelter closest to the barn. My brain was then wondering if it was perhaps a 4H Jersey calf, but obviously to an awake brain that would make no sense...how would a calf get in there? But then I started to worry it was hurt and would need to be put down, so got even closer...I was only about 2 meters away when the doe decided to vacate her warm nest and loped over to the fence, crawled through the fence into Dexter's pen, then through that pen, then opted to go through the fence in the worst place possible (where the cross bracing is), got stuck causing Dexter, Percy, and now Phelps to get really excited, but fortunately got free of the fence uninjured, and before any of them got to it.

I kind of wonder what the horses would have done had they got to the trapped deer? It seems Shawn, Rocket and Zander had make their peace with it hanging out with them, as they had all been around that shelter when I first went out.

It was interesting once I got the inside horses all turned out: Riley & Wolfgang spent a lot of time sniffing the deer nest and then prancing around like fools.

The poor dear likely thought it had found Utopia until I disturbed it: hay, water and shelter all so convenient! I wonder if it will come back? It should move in with Dani and Missy though, as I think it was a doe. I wonder if this means Shawn will no longer go on deer alert when ridden outside in the summer?

Karen