Lilies

I was taking a brief walk through my neighborhood just now, moving slow because of the heat, when I came upon a doe standing right in the middle of somebody's front yard, on a street where the houses are only perhaps 20 feet from the sidewalk.  I stopped and she stopped.  We looked at each other for a while.  Then she turned, in no particular hurry, and squeezed through the shrubbery into the next yard.  I took a few more steps and discovered her munching on some delicious daylilies growing right next to the front porch.  She had orange petals hanging out the sides of her mouth as she gazed at me.  After a minute or so, she began to amble towards the backyard, again not running away, just moving on.

This was on Prince Georges Ave., less than a mile as the crow flies from the boundary of Washington, D.C. proper, on a residential side street at 11:20 am.  True, the street was fairly quiet at that time, though a few houses down I saw a mother, child, and large dog playing in the neighborhood park.  But it made me happy to find a deer there who was so comfortable with her surroundings.  I'm sure the growers of the lilies are not as happy.  

I did not have my camera with me; so, here is a stock picture of a deer.