Apr 01, 2021 —
Doe up close and personal. Photo: public domain
Curt Stager's backyard is toward the edge of the village and a big picture window gives him a close-up view of the local whitetail population. So close that he notices details of their anatomy he had never noticed before - the big whiteless "doe eyes" and the long lashes and eyebrows that protect them from twigs, the complex musculature under their facial fur, a thin white band over the bridge of the nose that signals when they are sniffing a scent. "There were all these hidden layers of things to watch in a deer," he tells Martha Foley.
Martha Foley: You've got deer in your backyard, you've got a big window, it's away from the road. Are you getting to know those deer really well? Is it families of deer that come?
Curt Stager: We're really lucky, we live in Saranac Lake, but not in the main part of the village, we're a little bit off to the side. And there are woods around so the deer hang out in the neighborhood. So people have different relationships with them. Some people don't like them, because they'll eat everything in your garden. But we love them because we get to know them as family. So you know, the mom will bring a new fawn in the spring, and then the fawn grows up, and the next year you recognize them. And so it's actually kind of like just being part of the neighborhood to get to know your individual deer.
MF: Well, I've been to your house. And it's like one of those big TV screens, you know it's a big window. So they come really close. I know you're a very close observer of all things. What are you seeing that the rest of us don't get to see?
CS: It's amazing to watch them up close and alive and inquisitive and interacting.
MF: Do they get to know you? I mean, they're somewhat trusting?
CS: They definitely get to know us. They know we're the ones who put birdseed in the bird feeder, and then they clean up the leavings. That's one of the reasons they're there. But also they feel safe and hang out like, people walk their dogs nearby and that will scare them, and they'll run off or hide in our yard. But they don't see us as a threat. And so we kind of get to know each other. And there are these wonderful little details about them that I never read in a book, that probably wouldn't be useful to a hunter. So it's not online for the hunting stuff. One thing I noticed was, they don't have big whites of their eyes like we do. Or dogs, let's say, where you can kind of tell when you widen your eyes and you get that white ring. Or you can tell what direction a person is looking. It's harder to tell with deer they've got these big, dark, dark eyes without a rim around it.
MF: Doe eyes, I think.
CS: Doe eyes, right, so I thought well, that's you know, funny, because they are social, you know, but there are other things that you could notice. And one of them was one doe was near the window and kind of sniffing to see maybe what I was and I could tell her nose was bobbing up and down because she was close. But then I realized one of the ways I could tell her nose was moving and she was sniffing was because there's a very thin white band over the bridge of the nose, which I thought originally, why is that there? It doesn't do anything. And then I realized it bobs up and down and makes contrast to the darker nose in the face. So you can actually tell that she's checking you out, right?
MF: Like a visual cue.
CS: So it might be a neat visual cue. And then I noticed they've got these long, long eyebrows and eyelashes too, over their eyes, or eyebrows. And your figure well, that makes sense at night. If you've got these big doe eyes and you're walking through the brush you can feel twigs and things coming at your eyes and you blink in time and protect them.
MF: So you don't have goggles on.
CS: You don't have goggles. And then one of the neatest things was.. it suddenly clicked, when I looked at her face, she had a very thin summer coat of fur on her face. And there was this amazing texture of all the different muscles under that skin there. It looked like a Leonardo da Vinci drawing of anatomy. And they were lumps and straps of all kinds on her face. And I thought boy, you know, if you just contract this one, or you loosen that one up there, it would show through her face. And so I wonder if they do actually maybe have facial expressions that they notice on each other and tell their emotional state or who's dominant or not?
MF: Well, you know, I mean, when I see deer, I can tell whether they're aware of me or not. They give a lot of visual cues, their ears and their tail and all this but there must be this more intimate space that they're in with their little fawns or with their mates.
CS: Yeah. And so then I realized there were there were all these hidden layers of things to watch in a deer if you're a visual species like we are. And you put on top of that the smell that they're so good at, and they got these glands they use and tell stories about each other with as well, just so they must have whole layers of interaction that we're not aware of.
MF: Yeah. Thanks very much Dr. Curt Stager of Paul Smith's College. I'm Martha Foley at St. Lawrence University.
Natural Selections airs each Thursday morning on NCPR.
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April 01, 2021 at 06:53PM
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