Strange, how familiar faces seem to crop up when you least expect it.

Yesterday, at dusk I had found a delicious patch of young aspen to nibble, when I heard the telltale creaking and popping of a tree beginning to fall. Nothing in the forest makes such hair raising noises as a tree that is giving way. I looked around quickly, trying to figure out which tree was giving way. The tree wasn't very big, but it came down directly behind me, startling the living daylights out of me, and like any deer with good sense, I took off like a bullet through the underbrush.

As I was running, I thought I perceived a familiar hoof-beat above the hammer of my own hooves. My thoughts were cut short as a large roosevelt elk stag suddenly sprang into my path. I ran directly into him, and for lack of a better term, bounced off him, and landed helter-skelter in a patch of sword-leaf fern. As I was shaking my head, trying to make sense of what had just happened, the stag came over and nosed me. I rolled one dark eye to look at him, ready to tell him off and realized with surprise I'd seen the stag before.

"Hey there beautiful. What are you doing back in my neck of the woods?" He chuckled in his deep baritone.

I'd know that damnable stag anywhere.

"Delton!" I sighed in mock exasperation. "I should have known. Do you always get does attention by knocking down trees behind them?" As soon as I had realized it was Delton, I knew it was him who had knocked down the tree. He didn't do it out of spite, or aggression... he simply preferred to remove problem trees before they caught the unwary, or young. He laughed, tossing his antlers in a familiar gesture. Otherwise somewhat nondescript for a roosevelt stag, if you saw his antlers from the right angle, they formed a characteristic heart-shape.

"No. Only yours." He licked my forehead briefly. "Can I make it up to you? I know where there are some ripe thimbleberries that the bears haven't eaten." He said, inclining his head so I could see the twinkle in one of his large brown eyes, knowing my fondness for any and all berries.

I pretended to huff, and sigh, and made a great show of picking myself up and out of the fern bush, and shaking the bits of pine-needles and leaves out of my fur and feathers. "I think I'll let you. This time." He laughed again, and we ambled off to enjoy the huckleberries and play catch-up.

Perhaps returning to this forest was a good idea!