Ever Alert

I've posted many pictures from our wildlife camera and quite a few deer photos were among them.  Today I was going through the pictures from the last few nights and was struck by how vigilant the deer always are.  Here are some pictures of a group of three.

Notice that at least one of them is always on the alert, head up, ears pointing toward whatever danger they think may be lurking in the darkness.  It is rare to see them all eating at one time.


There seems to be this group of three that come together.  And, there is a pair that appear to hang out together.  Here they are.

Again, it is the same story, one or both of them is always on the look-out for danger.  If I scroll through the pictures on the camera fast, then the deer appear to move in a jerky manner as if they are actors in an old movie.   It is really quite comical.

But, then I got to thinking about why these deer seem to be so on guard.  There are really no predators for them to fear around here.  The major predators of deer are wolves and mountain lions, and these animals vanished from this part of the country many years ago.  Of course, we hear about the occasional mountain lion sighting.  But, naturalists generally agree that these animals are just passing through and not here to stay.

It seems that, even though their natural predators are gone from the scene, the deer still retain that innate instinct of survival that makes them alert to danger, even though it may only be imaginary.  Humans possessed that instinct at one time and I suppose we still do to a small extent.  But, thinking along these lines made me wonder what it would have been like to have lived in this country 500 years ago when large predators still walked these parts.  Certainly, humans were one of the predators, but they had to be ever alert, like these deer, in order to not fall prey to one of the others.  I imagine it was pretty difficult to get a good night's sleep in those times!