More wildlife sightings while running

Look closely: there's a deer in the middle of the picture!

One of the allures of running outside when you live in a part of the city/suburb with plenty of native forests is the possibility of coming across some semi-exotic wildlife (i.e., not just your typical chipmunks, squirrels, banana slugs).

My favorite encounter is still the coyote that I see on rare occasions (at least, I think it's the same one). More common are deer. In fact, more than once, we've had deer visit our backyard.

Anyway, on my long run today, I was chugging along, listening to Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star through Audible.com and enjoying the sunshine, when all of a sudden I had a quick rustling noise in front of me. I stopped to look around, pausing RunKeeper as well, and about ten feet away up on a little hill was a good-sized deer! Apparently I'd startled it and sent it scurrying away from me.

(It's interesting that the deer would be startled by a person; you'd think that living around here, it would be more or less used to people. This wasn't trail running. I was on a road, admittedly not a heavily trafficked one, but with homes on both sides.)

It stared at me as I called up the camera on my smartphone to take a picture. Don't run away, I thought to myself while waiting for the app to launch. It stayed still. Perhaps it was thinking of me as a T-rex: "if you don't move, it can't see you." (Not true, by the way.) Picture in hand, I resumed RunKeeper and got back to my running. Alas, no more wildlife for the rest of that run, other than some roadkill (three birds).