The Great White Deer Becomes the Great White Ghost September 12, 2007
Posted by Laura in Farm.trackback
If you’ve followed our blog for any length of time, you have no doubt noticed our fascination with an albino deer that has frequented our little neck of the woods. He was just beautiful and so striking to see in the pastures close to the house.
I mentioned to Joe on Saturday evening that I hadn’t seen Albie (the name I gave him- yeah, I know- kinda dumb) in about a week. Sunday morning I noticed a pack of dogs down at one of our ponds next to something white. Figuring it was a chicken they had caught, I went down to chase them away. When I got about half way down there, I could see it was Albie instead. (I hollered at the dogs anyway since we need no predators of any kind hanging around).
When Joe woke up, we went down together to check for signs of poaching. From the look of things, Albie had probably been down 1 1/2 – 2 days. He was right beside a pond that has been reduced to just a few inches of water. We couldn’t find any sign of injury, so we felt pretty sure he had not met with foul play. (Hunting season is a couple weeks off still and albino deer are protected in Tennessee anyway). Some folks at church mentioned that there is a disease killing off large numbers of deer this year. I found an article that explained.
Since he had gone down at the edge of the water (and we HOPE to get some more rain to fill the ponds back in), the deer had to be moved to prevent the water from becoming tainted. I had to run to the grocery store to get missing ingredients for our church potluck supper, so after morning service Joe and Benjamin got the dubious honor of dragging Albie to his final resting place while he could still be moved.
We’re a bit sad that we won’t be seeing him anymore, but we are grateful for the experience of having him here for a season.
On a lighter note- Joe asked me Sunday night if 15 years ago I ever would have believed the life I now live. He said, “Do you realize that this morning you got up before dawn, fed a bunch of animals, and then put on knee boots to go down and investigate a bloated dead deer before going to Sunday school and service in an ultra-conservative church?” I admitted that I would not have been able to imagine that. My, how things change!
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It is sad about Albie. However, I am glad you were able to enjoy him and get pictures so that we could enjoy him.
Someone else told me that Albie isn’t the only albino deer around here, so maybe he has kin. We know we were seeing the same one because he always traveled with the same 2 pals. They were memorable too- one had a huge rack of antlers and the other had only ONE antler! (We called him Elliot- a character from the Open Season movie).
When Joe read the post he mentioned that he seems to come off as a sleep-the-day-away slacker, so for the record, he’s usually up before me. Lydia gave up sleeping through the night about a six weeks ago and, since she started cutting teeth, neither of us has been sleeping much at all. Joe is generally up early and, given the chance, I could sleep until noon easily.