The Staring Contest With a Deer

Lucy has faced down cats, thunderstorms, and one rumored neighborhood bear. Today she added a new opponent to the list: a fawn who wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of it.

It happened on the quiet stretch of trail where the trees open up into a little clearing. Lucy was mid-sniff, nose fully committed to some fascinating patch of dirt, when she looked up and found herself about ten feet from a young deer who had apparently been standing there the whole time, equally unbothered and unaware.

Neither of them moved. Neither of them breathed, as far as I could tell. It was less a chase and more a full system freeze on both ends — two animals suddenly recalculating their entire day around the fact that the other one existed. The fawn’s ears swiveled forward. Lucy’s tail went stick-straight. For a solid, silent ten seconds, the trail belonged to whoever blinked first.

Nobody blinked first. Eventually the fawn made the executive decision to wander off into the brush at an unhurried pace that suggested it had never once considered Lucy a threat, which — fair. Lucy stood rooted to the spot a beat longer, watching the space where the deer had been like she was still waiting for stage two of the encounter to begin.

Standoff summary

• Duration of the stare: roughly ten seconds, felt like ten minutes
• Barks: zero — this situation apparently called for silence, not sound
• Winner: technically the deer, who left first, but Lucy is framing it as a draw
• Post-encounter behavior: three full minutes of sniffing the exact spot where the deer had stood

We finished the walk with Lucy checking over her shoulder at every rustle, clearly hoping for a rematch. The deer, presumably, was already three fields away and thinking about literally anything else.

More Lucy in your feed?

See Lucy's Favorite Things →