The fine print: C#

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The deer are actually the ones doing much of the deforestation.

But I agree with your point that the overpopulation is impossible to miss. I’m also in the suburbs of a major Midwestern city and the deer are everywhere. My city tags them so, oddly, you kind of get to know them.

Last year #100 and #161 both had fawns in my back yard (for a total of 3 babies). This year, #161 dropped 2 more back there. I still see #100 around, but I don’t think she had offspring this year. She might have been sterilized, but I heard that the city stopped doing that because some of our tagged deer were tracked to 2 states away. Now we just cull them.

Two days ago I saw a buck (rare for the 'burbs) chasing a few of this year’s fawns around. I thought “you dummy, those girls are too young to breed,” but then I looked it up, and apparently sexual maturity in deer is determined by weight, not age. Does can participate in their first-year rut if they’ve had enough to eat. And those little shits have had plenty of flowers out of my garden.