More dispatches from exam week.

Here is our fall in temporary preserve.

Last night, not long after I wrote here, I heard a crunching sound outside my living room and feared it was a person stalking about in the dark. I looked out and saw the tell-tale pale light of a deer's ears. When I crept to the porchlight switch and flipped it, then peered back out the window (sorry to have startled them), I saw not one but three--one ambling around the corner, one standing in the woods, one standing in the lawn in front of the woods. Eventually they all ambled into the front yard, pausing under my flaming-sworded friend's bird feeder, stopping around the oak trees near my front door, wandering off toward the parking lot.

These days, we're all wandering around a bit.