One Observant Woman And the World at Hand

When we pull into our driveway at this time of year, we invariably find guests standing among our apple trees, staring at us. Their look says something like, “Home?  Already?  Light day at the office?â€�       

We wave or call out a hellooo. They just look at us. Then they go back to grazing or they sashay off into the nearby woods, slowly, showing with a twitch of their white butts that we are not bothering them one bit, thank you very much.

    Yet it seems to me we should be bothering them. They are deer. We are not. They should be scared. They’re not.  What’s up?

“They probably know you,â€� says Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of “The Hidden Life of Deer,â€� by telephone from her office in Peterborough, NH.   That should make me feel better. I guess. She explains that deer typically have territories of up to a square mile, and they get to know that territory for the predators it includes—or the restaurants.

If anyone should know what’s up, it’s Thomas. The acclaimed anthropologist, now 78,  grew up in a family that for a time lived with bushmen in the Kalahari Desert of Africa. She studied elephants there in the 1980s and eventually settled back on the old family farm in Peterborough to study more-local animals —dogs, bear, coyotes — and their habitats. In 1993 she published “The Hidden Life of Dogs.â€� (Thomas has studied and written about cats and published three historical novels as well).

     “The Hidden Life of Dogsâ€� was a ground-breaker as well as a best-seller. At the time,  there was virtually nothing written for lay people about the psychology of dogs. Thomas changed all that — and now she’s done the same for deer.

“A deer is a ‘who’ as well as a ‘what’,� she said. “We grant that to our own pets but not to wild animals.�

    The deer book actually started as a turkey book. In the summer of 2007, Thomas noticed that local oak trees were producing virtually no acorns. When winter arrived, she worried that the flocks of wild turkeys around her house would starve, so she scattered corn for them. The corn attracted deer as well, first one little group, then another. Suddenly she found herself glued to the window with her binoculars.

Thomas’ book, written in an engagingly accessible essay style, covers just about whatever she can observe from her window. Thomas began by trying to identify individual deer, but soon realized that was impossible, so moved to identifying them by group. That proves easier, and she eventually ends up with four: the Alphas, the Betas, the Deltas and the Taus. Within those groups, she can begin identifying family members.

As she watches, Thomas compiles information and speculation as to what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it: feeding, mating, birthing, group behavior and more.  She’s not afraid to admit that she doesn’t know all the answers. She often steps aside to tell a relevant story in her casual style, which helps to patch together a seamless whole.  While she’s at it, she gives us a fair amount of information about other animals that figure in her life as well — dogs, parrots, rats and bear among them. She tells a sad warning story about poison. She includes a charming retelling of an interlude with her grandson as they watch the course of a monarch caterpillar over a two-day period.

For Thomas, two issues permeate the book: hunting and feeding. More specifically, humans hunting and feeding the deer. Thomas is ambivalent about both. She doesn’t like the idea of killing any animal and she’s pretty sure, even when the game wardens would like us to believe that it’s best to put an animal “out of its misery,� that it often would prefer to live. Yet she also understands that for deer, especially the white-tailed deer she’s studying, hunting has historically been an efficient method of herd control. “Deer have evolved in the presence of hunters,� she points out.

 Feeding is another issue, the issue that sparked the book.  Others tell her that human interference gets in the way of “nature’s course.â€� Of course it does, she answers, but in all sorts of ways—in building houses and roads. In eliminating water reserves and natural habitats. People object to feeding deer, she points out, but not “cute little birds.â€�

 In the end, she writes, the difficulty with wildlife observation is “You find questions you cannot answer and mysteries you cannot solve.â€�

  The turkeys and then the deer return the following winter — fall, actually — when the temperature plummets. They stand outside her office window and look at her. To Thomas, it’s very clear they’ve come back for the corn. “Every year from now on, for as long as I can carry a bucket of corn, I will try to protect the deer who live where I live, not because I think they are mine, but because I know who they are.â€�

This is the last piece Judith Linscott, our very dear friend at The Lakeville Journal, wrote for Compass.

As always, her work is individual, witty and entertaining.

Judith died Dec. 9. We miss her terribly.

We miss her writing, her nature, her awareness, her jolly days and her stormy days, too. We miss her colors, her snappy rejoinders, her intolerance of foolishness, her courage. We miss everything about her. But good writers leave words and ideas that change us. That’s why good writers like Judith live forever. She will be with us always — her newsroom fellows, friends, readers, all of us.

                                                                                    — Marsden Epworth