Deer Country: Meet Brow and Zer, Hosta Browsers

Brow (top) and Zer

Twin fawns Brow and Zer nervously investigated our gardens without their mom on Friday evening. 
Every year I call twin fawns Brow and Zer because of their browsing of our perennials, shrubs, and young trees.

Brow this year is the fawn with two horizontal, cupped parentheses marks on his left side just before her rear left leg.  Zer is the one with the four-dot U marking at the top of her left leg.  On a statistical basis I call them female, so it will be she and she, her and her, Brow and Zer.

Friday evening Brow and Zer came as close as about 15 feet from me, though a window separated us.  During earlier visits they were with their mother, who generally kept them about 50 feet away. 

But Friday their mother was nowhere in sight, and they ventured closer and closer, nervously, with Brow occasionally stamping one of her front feet, probably because her mother often does that when she feels I’m too close to her twins when I’m outside and invade her comfort zone.

Zer: If I step between the alliums and the Shasta daisies,
I’ll be at the hostas.

Several nights earlier Brow and Zer and mother, I assume, chowed down on our hostas, some of which were within four feet of my study window, through which I often photograph them.  Of course I was busy zzz-ing while they were snacking.

Perhaps Brow and Zer will visit often, but if they do, our hostas will not be in danger because Brow and Zer and Mom ate all but about seven leaves of the four plants I had treated with deer-repellent tablets in the spring.

I suppose Ellen and I will just have to get used to hostas with leafless stems, and Brow and Zer will have to get used to hosta stems without leaves.

Brow: Aren't they hosta candy stalks
just beyond the lavender?