Each morning when I enter my classroom, I walk to the opposite side of the room to look out the window. There is a wooded area that separates our campus from a satellite campus of Temple University. I search for the deer that often make their way through the wooded area in the morning. A tornado in September of 2021 thinned out the woods a great deal, but my deer friends with their natural camouflage aren’t always easy to see.

This morning I saw a rather large brown mass. I couldn’t tell if it was a deer sitting down or a tree stump. I watched a little more and then went about my morning routine. A few minutes later, the teacher in the next room came in and pointed out that several deer were sitting out back. Just then a couple of them began to lift their heads. There was the answer to my question – it was a deer.

By now, a student had arrived, and we looked at the deer together trying to count how many were moseying around out back. We were up to about ten (which was more than usual) when all of a sudden two deer railed up on their hind legs and began fighting!! Neither Sean nor I had ever seen this happen before. I sent Sean into the next room to alert the teacher to look out and see the conflict going on outside.

The skirmish went on for a few minutes and then the deer started running and chasing each other, leaping over fallen tree limbs, and circling back around. It was like the deer were filming a new version of the rumble scene from The Outsiders, but it was hard to tell which were Greasers and which were Socs!

Unfortunately, they were too far away to take a good picture, especially through the screen, but they looked something like the two pictured here.

They romped around for a couple more minutes before they dated off in different directions. It was time for us to get moving on with our day, but the sight of those deer fighting (something until today I had only seen on TV) has really stuck with me.