Look of Love(Gerald R Gioglio) “Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.” --Charles Darwin--

It was a Red Mountain Day. One of those rare daybreaks when the eager morning sun casts a warm scarlet glow over Colorado’s Blodgett Mountain, a little piece of heaven visible from our kitchen window. You look for this scene every sleepy morning. If it arrives it is wise to stay in the minute and connect with it all —Brother Sun and Sister Mountain--siblings arriving for one of their collective, awe-inspiring visits.

And so, you make the coffee, not really transcendent, but finding an excuse to linger by the window to take it all in. It only lasts a short time until the sun changes trajectory and chameleonlike, the mountain assumes its familiar hews of light-rust brown and flora-green.

But now you are awake and aware. So, each time you go by that window you survey the area. After all, it is late fall. One might catch the rare black bear sauntering through before settling on a place to hibernate. But mostly you’ll see Mule Deer, especially the arrival of the bucks who normally hang out on the mountains. Some are large, stately oldsters with many pointed antlers, others fully-grown muscular adults. Then too the young ones, shedding fur from their promising racks, marking passage into adulthood. They all come down to join the females; both are looking to mate.

It’s a timeless ritual. The males are aggressive and not so choosy, relentlessly following the essence driving their desire. The females more selective—there are offspring to consider. It’s a casual affair at best… one pregnant with the promise of new life in the spring. Oh yes, both are hungry, and the survival of their kind is at stake.

Suddenly, my eyes are drawn to the “Square Foot” gardens I built in the backyard. These above-ground, wooden boxes are surrounded by PVC structures wrapped in green vinyl “chicken wire” shielding crops from ravenous wildlife. They work. Today they serve a different purpose. The cages are being used as a barrier by one of the ladies to put distance between her and a prospective suitor.

The hesitant female and the anxious male make prolonged eye contact, taking each other’s purchase even as they keep their distance. When the male makes a move to come around the cage the female makes an equivalent move in the opposite direction. She does not run away. He does not close the chase. Aware of their vulnerability, they stop periodically to scope the area; ears up, alert for potential human or four-legged predators, they seem momentarily distracted from the sexual tension each is broadcasting.

All at once, another doe eyes the male. With a welcoming wave of her short, snowy tail she begins strutting her stuff as if to say, “Breathe it all in big boy; come to mama.”

From the safety of her side of the cage the original object of the male’s attention watches anxiously as that relationship-busting-hussy puts on a show. One imagines her thinking, “What’s she got that I ain’t got? Is he ready to commit? Or is he tired of our dance and keen to engage that bold, brassy, femme fatale?”

No. Antlers down, he lingers. He does not take the bait. Eventually, a woman scorned, the second gal lopes away. She knows there are too many boys on the block and all too many hungry eyes willing to take a good look and give it a go.

Soon, the two love birds begin moving in unison around the cage, the buck slowly left, the doe approaching on the right. Face-to-face, they relax; she suddenly leans down to nuzzle him on his side. He is patient. She seems pleased. They walk off together into the grove next to our home.

A timeless ritual-- surviving and thriving, coupling and multiplying—Divine love resurrected again and again on earth.

And so, the dance continues this glorious red-mountain day; as it always has, and always will. I seize the moment, blessed again, trying once more to connect with it all.

THE END

Postscript. For a related story see Animal Attraction at: https://www.storystar.com/story/20548/gerald-r-gioglio/true-life/family-friends

© 2021, Gerald R Gioglio

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