It's a deer's life (urban park particulars)

wetland and surrounding park in north Grand Rapids, MI

What once was considered waste land too wet to drain and too thickly filled with plant and animal life for housebuilding is now seen by residents and other visitors as a jewel in the city landscape of streets, parking lots, residential, industrial, and commercial developments. In 30 to 40 minutes of easy walking a person can circle the park on a paved trail and its recently replaced boardwalk. Early in the morning the deer and birds have the place to themselves. On weekends and some evenings during the summer in the adjacent park area, converted into parking lot and multiple baseball fields, there can be a lot of commotion from shouts and cheers and the sound of pinging aluminum bats hitting softball or baseball pitches. But on this weekday around the time of sunrise, all is quiet except for songbirds and their predators.

Seeing this deer nibbling grass and another one elsewhere pulling down low-hanging leafy branches to eat, thoughts about the deer habitat and their Umwelt world of experience in the city comes to mind. Apart from residential lawns, school grounds, and a few golf courses around town, there are not too many woodlots and wetlands within the city limits. So basic needs of small, medium, and large wildlife is very much limited to these ecological islands of food, water, safety and shelter. In the space of one deer lifetime a fawn has to survive the springtime "starvation season" when weather can be cruel and food sources are limited. If the creature reaches adulthood, then the time of mating and reproducing the species is uppermost. Hunters with the appropriate license during fall and early winter may kill some bucks and does in the countryside, but in the city limits there is relatively little chance of death by arrow or bullet. Injury or death by car collision is not uncommon, though. Some animals may survive just one cycle of reproducing young, but others may last two or sometimes three seasons. Eventually, though, by disease or collision each deer will breathe its last breath. The carcass may feed scavengers or be hauled away by the city's parks and recreation workers who collect roadkill. There may be few deer that reach a ripe old age, but this pattern of reproducing and dying before too long does result in a steady population.

Seen from a human perspective, it may feel suffocating to live one's whole life in small islands of green, surrounded by pavement, fast-moving cars, and parking lots. From birth to death is just a matter of 30 or 40 months at most and in that time each deer needs to learn survival skills to find food, water, shelter and safety away from cars. Once an animal's replacement number is born and able to survive, then it is only a matter of time before accident or injury end the deer's life. 

In summary, measured relative to the "three-score and ten years" (70 years) that defines a full human life (at least in Biblical passages), the scope of travel and timeline for deer is much smaller. Of course, it is impossible to talk to deer about their perception of life's risks and rewards, but seeing this photo of a breakfasting deer and remembering the "big picture" for deer-dom of short lives and small circle of places to live in, there comes a twinge of melancholy since just one year from now the life in this (semi)wild creature may be ended one way or another as the next generation fills in the gaps in the herd.

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Coda: The handful of houses bordering the south end of the park is now being bought up by a developer to erode the greenspace of the park habitat that hosts so many forms of life. So this island of green in the city will be just a little more littered with humans. Some online residents are sharing details of the developer's plans and are creating an online petition against any degrading of the parkland. But all through colonization of this Indian land and up to the present #ClimateEmergency money and development tends to trump habitat and natural complexity. With housing development comes noise and disruption of waterflow and deafening the space for birds and other creatures to communicate in. Doubtless more human-deer collisions and interactions will also arise. Things do not look too good for the deer in this case.