So Hot the Deer Are Swimming! White-tailed Deer

White-tailed deer swimming in the Atlantic ocean.

This is the view from our house, looking south out to sea. See the deer near the mooring ball? The deer could swim straight to Morocco from here.

Deer have such fragile looking legs, it's hard to imagine them clambering on slick, sea weed covered rocks.

Deer swim like dogs. When they get out of the water, they shake like dogs do, too.

    This has been a hot, sultry summer with record breaking heat. That's not news to anyone in Texas, but we Mainer's aren't used to it. My husband installed an air conditioner in our bedroom. I was skeptical about the need for what seemed like a decorating monstrosity. Here on the coast, it's usually ten degrees or more cooler than inland and we have steady breeze off the water. However, we had enough days of ninety degree weather strung together to claim a heat wave and I had to eat crow. Even the deer took to the water!

     Deer swim well, but it doesn't look natural to me. They swim to escape predators and to find new territories for food and mates. In the photo above, the land mass on the left is the tip of Hermit Island.  "The Hermit" is over run with White-tailed deer as no hunting is allowed there. This was not the first time I've seen deer swimming the mile or so across the cove.  Hermit Island has more than 200 camp sites. Perhaps the deer object to the camper's noise, or choices in music. I start feeling a little crowded with summer people, too. I'm much too lazy to swim that far, though. Deer sometimes get into swimming pools, too which can be a disaster. Their sharp hooves tear up liners and if they can't get out, they drown. White-tailed deer weigh between 125 and 300 pounds. That would be a lot of dead weight to haul from a pool. Deer may seek relief in cool water from skin parasites, like ticks, Deer flies  and mosquitos. Or, they may swim just for the pure joy of it, like we do. This particular deer swam across the cove, got out, then turned around and swam back. To date, I've never seen a deer wearing ear plugs nor a bathing cap and, they swim in the nude. 

      Soon enough, before we even realize summer is really over, it will be cold and snowing. We'll be complaining about shovelling instead of the heat. The air conditioner will be gone and frost will coat the windows. I'll scratch a hole through the frost to look outside and shiver at the falling snow. Maybe I'll see a deer ice skating or skiing. I'll let you know.


(This post was chosen as Editor's Pick for Open Salon at http://salon.com. It is the ninth of my works selected as Editor's Pick.)

Hang Over Cure- The Power Of The Pileated Woodpecker

Female Pileated Woodpecker

Recently, I spent three consecutive days on Hermit Island from six forty-five to ten AM. Hermit Island is on the end of the Phippsburg peninsula. Because it juts far out into the Atlantic ocean, it is a haven for migrating birds. They don't like crossing expanses of water any more than I like getting up early. So, they congregate building their numbers for the inevitable crossing. To catch the birds as they began to move with the rising sun's heat, I had to rise at 6, which makes me absolutely nauseous. I'm not crabby when I get up, but I am logy and have to fight back the spins. This is just how it is for me; I'm accustomed to plowing my way toward wakefulness. As soon as I start moving, I'm okay and I really do love the light in the morning and the soft silence.
     Hermit Island is privately owned. It's an undeveloped campground with 275 sites. Columbus Day weekend was the last hurrah. There were many die hard campers, none of whom were awake when I arrived. As I walked the two miles of dirt road to the end of the island, I could hear breathing and snoring from the tents. Picnic tables were littered with beer bottles and cans, debris from partying. A Red squirrel toppled a few to the ground, scaring itself, then scampering away. The only other sounds were rustling leaves, and the birds, thousands of them. Chirring, chipping and whirring mingled with the scratching sounds of tiny claws on bark. As I walked, no matter how carefully I placed each step, rocks skidded and gravel crunched. By comparison, my own foot steps were clunky, until I heard the Pileated woodpeckers.
     Pileateds are noisy. They bash, hammer and tear at trees and their call rips the air. I saw five in one day, four of them near one another. I'm sure they were the Pileated family group I had written about this past spring. It was a thrill to see them all grown up and out tearing up the forest. Their raucous screeching and drumming must have been a delight for hung-over campers' headaches. When I was a child, my father was often hung over. To roust him out and torment him, my mother would bang together pots and pans and tell him she was serving him a glass full of cold pork gravey. This formula usually worked, too. He would probably have preferred a Pileated cure.

Deer Dancing On The Beach

 Directly across the cove from us is Hermit Island (see http://www.hermitisland.com/ for more information). The island is largely undeveloped. It has rustic campsites for spectacular ocean side camping. Hunting is not allowed on the island, so the White-tailed deer abound there. The campers love the deer that have become habituated to humans. They are quite tame (the deer, not the campers) which allows for easy viewing. Sand-dollar beach is about 1/4 mile from here. I've become so accustomed to the usual shapes, textures and forms 'across the way,' that I could immediately see the deer from as far away as our house. I did have to use binoculars to count how many there were, though. Thankfully, I've got a telephoto lens long enough to photograph the surface of the moon, so I could get these shots. Otherwise, I would have to be in a boat for this look at deer gamboling across the beach. One winter the snow was so deep that I saw deer over there eating sea weed. They were along the water line on what would be the left side of the photo (north) and were clearly munching on the rock weed. Now, that's desperate. Unless, of course, you are eating California rolls wrapped in knori - throw in a little wasabi paste and pickled ginger, then desperation becomes haute cuisine.

Good day, Sunshine!

I don't know how many days of sunshine we’ve officially had in Maine for the month of July, but I can tell you for sure that my count would be too few. The sun has finally been out for the past two days, but I think everyone is waiting for the other meteorologic shoe to drop. My weather station barometer says in fact, that it's going to rain. I’m not sure it actually will, though. There's an icon of a cloud with rain falling out of it and a downward pointing arrow. Perhaps it's been displaying that symbol for so long, that as it's mother probably told it, "Keep making that face and you'll get stuck that way!" Or maybe the weather station has finally cracked up, like the rest of us. This poor, Double Crested cormorant (a ‘DC’ in birding circles) is panting it's so hot! Birds do that when they are overheated or otherwise stressed. Most of them are smart enough to get into the water, though! Even David and I got into our pool for the first time this season. The sun brought everybody out and their laundry. This rental cottage sits across the cove from us. There is no electricity there, thus no clothes dryer. So, the minute the sun came out so did every wet towel and article of clothing this family possessed! And we had the first rainbow of the entire summer, though it too was quite washed out compared to years past. We see Hermit Island camp ground from our house. Every year when it rains I think of the poor campers, huddled in tents and standing around smoldering, damp fires, pretending they are having fun. We know a family that camped there every summer for eighteen years. For sixteen years, it rained. They finally bought a cottage here and paid a King’s ransom for it, too. Anything for a roof, they said. There is a certain amount of “street cred” to be earned in enduring this kind of thing in the name of fun and family bonding. I earned my chops this year when I went to Baxter State Park for the first time to see the moose cows with their calves. In the two days I was there, the park had a record ten inches of rain. The water levels were ten feet above normal, so no moose were to be seen. They had been driven to higher ground and away from their aquatic food sources. Either that, or they were all waiting it out at a bar in Millinocket, drinking beer and watching ESPN on a flat screen TV. This has been the year that even a moose might contemplate, “I think I’ll save up and buy a camp.”