I love our mornings here on island, they start slowly. Since our house is tucked safely on the west side of a big hill, the actual sun doesn’t show itself to us until about 10 or so. The result is that mornings seem to linger and relax. Unfortunately, we don’t get to do the same. We don’t lay around drinking tea and eating toast during that time. No, those beautiful minutes between getting up and the moment the sun peeks over the hill are perfect for gardening and doing hard work outside, since it is cooler before the sun is hammering down on us. For example, by eleven this morning, I’d weeded three big flower beds and fought a yucky infestation of some kind of caterpillar intent on eating my newly transplanted spider lilies. Sometimes I’d rather be munching toast, but truly, the way my garden beds look right now, I’ve no complaints about how my day started.
Oh, yes, that is what I was going to blog about…how my day started this morning. I got distracted. Sorry. The sky was a dusty pink when we woke up this morning, about 6:30 I think. When Karl got out of bed, he glanced out the window and remarked that we had a deer in the yard. I got up and joined him to watch a very young mule deer buck, the points of his antlers were just little nubs on his head, as he enjoyed our yard. He was skittish and kept looking in one direction, though, and it took a minute or so to realize that our neighbor’s black and white cat was also in the yard, partially hidden behind a seagrape seeding I’ve been nurturing. It was clear from our perspective that the deer was a little anxious about the cat, but also clearly curious. As far at the kitty goes, he was calm – all except the little white point at the tip of his tail – which twitched continually. The two stood for several minutes, just looking at each other from about a three-foot distance, then finally the cat stood and stretched while the deer lifted its head and then bounded away through the rain forest.
It was a simple encounter and I feel lucky to have watched it. Later, as I weeded the garden, my thoughts kept coming back to those two creatures, so different and holding such potential as enemies. Then my thoughts strayed to the anger and hostilities our country is so full of between right and left, republican and democrat. And I wish, I pray, that somehow we could figure out how to stop fighting like cats and dogs and figure out how to live together like this morning’s cat and deer.
