Deer Whispering?

[Okanagan]

My daughter-in-law enlarged the stone patio in front of our apartment and added a rose bed with about ten rose bushes on one side.  The second morning after the roses were planted, I stepped out in the grey dawn and three blacktail does clattered out of the roses and across the paving bricks.  They stopped 40 feet from me and stared.

Not sure why but I talked to them.  I looked the biggest doe in the eye, and with her eyes locked on mine, I said, ”You stay out of our roses.”

I spoke in a conversational volume but with a stern tone.  Eyes still locked, with a slight nod I said, “Lisa will get you if you bother her roses.”

After another beat of silence the big doe slowly turned her head and started to take a step, not quite a stamp but more than a casual step.  Before she finished I turned and stepped back inside, cutting off her move before she completed it.

I know that deer love roses, probably due to the sweet sap.  On a ranch in Oregon where I worked mule deer would eat rose bushes down to a nub at the dirt line, right beside the ranch house door.

For whatever reason, the deer have not touched the roses here in the five days since.  No new tracks in the fresh topsoil, no more buds nipped. 

It is likely my imagination but at the time and on reflection since, it seemed like the doe and  I were communicating something that she understood. 

It had the same feel to it as when a cow caribou has locked eyes with me and done her urination ritual (a story told here a few years ago.)

Just in case, I have started putting cougar urine on a few little strips of dark cotton cloth tied to several of the rose bushes.  That has ruined my experiment in talking to deer, but the roses are more important right now.

[nastygunz]

 What I really want to know is how much of a fight did the cougar put up when you were taking the urine from it