11 April, 2011

Almost Earless

(again - apologies to Christine for messing with the title of her blog Almost Fearless)

Back in February, we noticed a white-tailed doe that had one ear shorter than the other among the deer that come to raid the bird feeders.  Then last week I saw this one with 2 bobbed ears.  What is going on?  Were they injured?  Is some crazy person taking deer ears as trophies?  Is there a mutation generating bob-eared deer?  Finally it was still light enough when I got home from work for me to get a couple of barely passable photos.  She looks kind of sweet from this vantage.
The light was fading, so the shots are not sharp.  But if you click to enlarge the photo below you can see sore spots on the ears.

I believe what I had thought were 2 does is really just one slowly losing bits of her ears.  Perhaps her ears were badly frost-bitten during those bitter cold weeks we had and the dead parts are falling off.  Otherwise, she looks healthy.  Has anyone else ever seen anything like this?  I will keep an eye on her this spring to see how she fares.

5 comments:

  1. Strangely i cannot see the pictures :-(

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow what a weird looking deer.......

    ReplyDelete
  3. Chris - I re-posted the pics. Hope you get a chance to try again.

    Stu - isn't it! I have a couple of friends who are sending the photos to a friend at the Minnesota of Department of Natural Resources and another friend at a local wildlife park to see if they know what is going on. If I get any answers, I will do another post.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Poor thing, it looks like it should be very painful, I do hope it isn't!

    I do hope you manage to find out what is going on.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Jan - I think I have an answer to what this is. I hope to post a little more about it in the next few days. If it is what I think it is, she should be OK. Thanks for stopping by.

    cheers,
    wilma

    ReplyDelete

Blog Readers -- your comments are invited. I would love to hear from you.