A funny thing

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A couple of days ago I woke early, just as it was getting light, and heard sounds of something blundering about outside. I could tell from the noises that they were bumping into the shovel I had left there, and pushing about the cover from the garden chairs that had been left out. I looked out of the window but couldn’t see anything. We have a big grapevine growing over a pergola below the bedroom window. So I went downstairs and looked out of the kitchen door, and there was a fox. I thought that must be the cause of the noises, maybe rummaging about out there picking up fallen grapes (foxes are famously fond of grapes!) so I went to the bathroom before going back to bed. But the noises continued, so I went and looked out of a different window, and there, standing on the patio, was a young deer – the same one as a couple of weeks ago. Well I didn’t want to wrestle a deer in my skimpy pyjamas so I went back upstairs and got dressed, then went outside to sort it out. This time I hadn’t left any openings into the flower bed (a different one to last time) but the deer must have jumped or pushed her way in to the flower bed, then tried a different way out. Obviously this young doe is particularly adventurous or careless or just overly greedy! Unfortunately this type of fencing has holes just the right size for a deer to stick its head through. So she had put her head through it then managed to drag the length of fencing plus half a dozen metal stakes all the way down the garden until she got snagged on something on the patio. Not sure what, because when she saw me coming she leaped about more wildly, the fence came free, and she started to run off with the whole lot dragging behind her, on the way getting caught in a heavy plastic tub which made an almighty clattering. I managed to grab the trailing part – obviously I couldn’t let her run off into the woods like that! and then she started bleating/ calling out loudly for mum (who I saw running up the road). I hadn’t had a chance to get the blanket so I took off my jacket and put that over her, which wasn’t ideal as it was too small and also no doubt smelt scarily of human. Luckily just then my partner came out and was able to fetch the blanket and after that it was relatively simple this time to get the loops of fencing over her ears and set her free. The funny thing is that my partner slept through the noises that woke me up, slept through me getting up and going out, then coming back to the bedroom to get dressed and going out again, slept through the racket made by the deer caught in the tub, and was only finally woken up by the bleating of the deer, which he thought must be me pushing a particularly squeaky wheelbarrow! And all this was going on right under the bedroom window! Then the very next night he woke me up jumping out of bed because he heard knocking noises. I hadn’t heard a thing and still couldn’t, and he couldn’t find any source of a noise when he went to investigate, nor hear it any more. I’m convinced he only wakes up when he hears noises in his head, the real life noises don’t disturb him at all! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2024.