LAKELAND - Every morning for a number of days a quite unexpected visitor has tentatively made her way into the yard of a Lakeland resident. The all-white mule deer steps out into the spring sunshine to the daily amazement of the landowner who has managed to capture a few pictures of her and now looks forward to her morning visits.
“You’ve got to be really slow moving but you can get close,” said the landowner, who wishes not to be named in order to protect his identity and the location of the deer.
“I saw it last Thursday (May 6) for the first time and I’ve been seeing it every day since. At about eight or nine in the morning she’ll come out and walk around my lawn. I haven’t seen her in the evening at all.”
He wonders if she has a fawn but has seen no sign of one yet. “I’m hoping because that would be cute.”
Asked if he thinks the deer’s appearance in his yard is more than luck, he said at 63 years of age he’s never seen anything like it before.
“I am kind of spiritual that way, I believe in things but I don’t know what the deer is supposed to do for me,” he said, noting that he’s just happy to have seen it.
One only has to google ‘white deer’ to learn there is much symbolism in many different cultures attached to such a sighting. From being a sign of prophecy, foretelling of change, of prosperity, a good omen, a time of rebirth or transformation – all of these and more are linked to the appearance of a white deer.
On the scientific front, the meaning of the white deer is far less spiritual and while white deer may be unusual and extraordinary in colour, they simply lack the ordinary colour pigmentation.
With Lakeland residents looking for some light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, here is hoping the deer is a harbinger of good luck for everyone.
