Oh, deer me!

The date was Monday, February 18th, 2008. The place was the "Grand Canyon Deer Farm" just east of Williams, Arizona on the north side of Interstate 40.

I was visiting my mother in Prescott, Arizona and we decided we needed to get out and do something different. She had heard of the Grand Canyon Deer Farm before, but had never made a point of visiting it while she was still driving and more mobile than she is today.

The deer acted very happy to see us, being that we had bought a bucket of feed prior to entering the park. Some are more acclimated to people than others; some of the deer stayed just out of arms length while others practically climbed in her lap to get at the food.

My mother had a great time feeding the "starving" deer... the amusing part was that before we were to leave, the deer had started ignoring us. She'd hold out a handful of food, and they'd look at it and then wander off. We thought maybe they'd had their fill, but just then some new "suckers" would walk through the gate and the deer would run toward them, and eat out of their hands like they hadn't seen food in many days!

My mother plays Scrabble (and loves the game); I have never been a fan of it but try to tolerate a few games for her sake when I'm there. This trip was unusual in that we played seven games, and I won all seven of them. I'd draw the tiles that had higher point values, and then would be able to place them on the board where they would take advantage of extra point squares, often with multiple words. My mother, meanwhile, would get horrible draws with all seven tiles being vowels, or some other horrid combination that just didn't work for her. (She's no slouch at this game, and can usually whip the best of 'em!) Out of the seven games played, we both agreed that there was only ONE game where the odds were fairly even between the two of us. And being able to pull off that victory was just plain stupid luck on my part!

Having flown back to Boise on Tuesday, the weather had been nice up until my return. It then got a little cooler, with some rain and a light snow thrown in for good measure. This morning I woke up to find yet another small dusting of snow from overnight; fortunately the temperatures are getting warm enough now that the snow that fell will melt away, leaving only the stuff that accumulated from last month standing on the ground. Maybe if we get a nice warming trend we can get rid of that snow as well!