Grooving on the Writing and Deer!

I went to Starbucks yesterday to write. It felt good sitting quietly in a cafe and tapping away on the keyboard. So good I did 1200 words in one sitting. It's been a while since I could do that. I guess the last year of the pandemic stressed me more than I realized.

This is the first picture I took when I arrived in Boise. Tracie was showing me around their house, and we stepped out into the backyard. The mule deer buck stuck to the shade int the neighbors and nibbled on some greens.

His new horns are pretty fuzzy, and he didn't seem to care we were out there until I got too close to the fence. But instead of taking off, he saunters a few steps away and kept an eye on me.

For those who don't live in the western portion of the U.S., the mule deer, or black-tailed deer, is so named because their tails resemble a mule's, as opposed to the white-tailed deer that like to go traipsing through our yard in Ohio.

I expect wildlife in rural Ohio, but Boise is a major metropolitan city. Tracie lives a few blocks from downtown. But it's still high desert and was 100 degrees the afternoon I arrived, so I don't blame the little guy for wanting a little shade and a bite of green.

High Mountain Desert

I don't have email on my travel computer. Actually, Baby Blue is more of a glorified tablet than a laptop, but she gets the job done. But I don't have email on her for a reason. In theory, I'm avoiding interruptions while I write. So, if you've sent me an email on one of my business accounts, I'll answer when I get home in ten days.

That's also why I'm not posting any pictures yet. It's a hassle switching the memory card from my phone to Baby Blue. The dang thing is a quarter of the size of my actual thumbnail. I worry about dropping it and either losing it in the carpet or one of my host's cats thinks it's a treat and eats it.

Idaho has a stark beauty outside of Boise, i.e. very few trees. Wild critters come into town for shade. As my host was showing me their garden in the backyard, we noticed a mule deer in the neighbor's backyard. He was a young buck. Fuzz covered his new antlers. And he didn't mind me taking pictures as long as I didn't get too close to the fence.

We get deer in our backyard in Ohio, but this was a new breed I hadn't seen before in the "wild". I was fascinated.