Chapter 2 | Life on a Colorado Farm

We have BIG animals—BIG:

First, we have DEER!

I try to hide when I see Deer. We have big Daddy deer, called A buck, who comes trotting into the yard randomly. Sometimes bringing along his wife, called a doe. They hang out in Mom’s yard and eat all the apples and apricots and cherries and—I think you get the picture.

If we don’t get Dad and Mom deer, we will get Mom and kid deer. Remember Mom is called a doe and the baby is called a fawn. Sometimes the doe has twins.

In the winter everyone (of the Deer family (called a herd)) likes to hang out together.

Sooo come winter we can have a HUGE group of deer in the yard (MY DOMAINE) or out on the farm itself.

In the fall hunters hunt the deer, but our deer live with us on the farm, which is private ground, therefore no hunting. Unless the hunter gets a special ‘private ground’ hunting license.

But our deer…well, our deer seem to disappear about the time the cows show up. It seems like if we have cows on the farm, the deer migrate someplace else.

Don’t ask me why I don’t know.

Then come Summer—always in Summer the deer come back and hang out in the cornfields, where they build little round beds in the middle and snack on the corn silks.

At night, when it is dark outside, then they silently slip to the yard and SNACK away!

The next big animal is the COWS! But you already know about the cows.

Since I’m not going to rehash cows, I will tell you about bears who sometimes walk on the farm.

They also like fruit and will come in—but mostly they don’t come because they have lots to eat wherever they live in the canyons. BUT they have come when the drought is so bad all the wild cherries and berries dried up and didn’t produce.

Then we get a bear or two.

Talk about SCARY! I mean S.C.A.R.Y.! Mom and Dad call the Division of Wildlife and have an officer come out to tranquilize the bear and take it back up to the Uncompahgre Plateau.

Mom said a couple of years ago (I didn’t live here then, I wasn’t even a thought in my parents’ brains, at that point.) The bear came down in droves.
Then they found the sweet cornfields.

They sent back scouts to let all their bear friends know about the fields full of CANDY!

Mom said we had many, many. One bear even tried to break into our elderly neighbor’s house.