My son and I were in the house the other day, and he called for me to tell me there was a deer standing outside the picture window in our living room. Not 6 feet from the window stood a large doe.
I can tell winter isn’t far away when the deer start eating the plants in my front garden they normally leave alone during the summer months. But this doe was doing something I have never seen before. She was gobbling up all the fallen leaves on the ground around our Norway maple. I have seen them eating live tree leaves and evergreens, and they love the young branches of our apple trees during the winter months, but this I have never seen. I ran and got the camera and took a video of her munching away. Check it out above.
It left me wondering if our deer herd has always eaten the fallen leaves and I just never saw it because it was under the cover of darkness. Or maybe is this one deer just trying something new. Has anyone ever seen deer do this before? I’m curious.
Regardless of why she was enjoying this strange meal, I encouraged her to continue, hoping that perhaps she would eat them all and I won’t have to rake them. Sure enough, within a minute or two a car came down the road and off she went, leaving plenty of leaves for us to collect and compost (a chore my husband is outside doing as I write this). Perhaps she will be back with her friends over the coming nights and get back to eating—hopefully the fallen leaves rather than my holly bushes.
