“We have a beautiful pair of Venetian wrought iron gates that open into the orchard - a tapestry of living, writhing steel through which I have been passing since I was a clear-eyed, cold-bathing boy. My mother moved them from house to house, and then, when we went to live in Elm (she had bought a house which already had a gate), she gave them to us……”
From A Family Way by David Barr (my father)
He was writing about the 1950s. The gates had been with his mother since at least the 1920s. In his book my father describes how he spent the whole of one Christmas renovating one of the gates, only to realise that after many, many hours he had completed just one of the gates, and risked having to wait for the following Christmas before he finished the task.
In 2005 he died and the tradition continued. We moved the gates here to our home in Norfolk where they form an impressive entrance to a less than impressive part of the garden. By then they had deteriorated (again) and were in much need of TLC - but they had to wait more than 10 years to receive it.
In 2016 my stepdaughter Philippa was to be married, with the reception in the garden. Her mother-in-law-to-be took charge of restoring the gates once again to pristine condition for the big day. They have since suffered gentle decay as they are assaulted by the North Sea air but - no TLC is in the offing.
The gates now - gentle decay
And that brings us to December 2023, and at last I am coming to the point.
Philippa now has 2 delightful children. Her daughter Amèlie is as bright as a diamond and has a temperament to match any two-year-old: alternating between being so charming that she melts the hardest of hearts, and being so fractious that in her hands World War III could easily break out.
Last Wednesday, Philippa and Amèlie were with us. After becoming bored of being charming she became furious and no amount of cajoling, charming or time-outing would calm her.
Later I was coming in from outside when I heard screams from another part of the garden. The scream was persistent and sounded like a small child being murdered. I wondered if Amelie had eventually won the battle, and it was now Philippa who was in the process of screaming the house down.
I wandered over to where the sound came from. No sign of Philippa or Amelie. All was silent again. Were they in the undergrowth and unable to get up? Not that either. Then I went through the gates and, as I passed, a little movement caught my eye.
There with its head firmly stuck through part of the gate and with 3 of its legs pushed through other parts of the gate was a young Muntjac deer. We have one or two families of them living here. They are quite tame. The adults are about the size of a Labrador and they wander round the garden occasionally digging up daffodil bulbs and making strange barking noises at night, especially during the mating season.
This one had evidently decided to be adventurous, as well as being a little dim. There are plenty of ways in and out of the garden without attempting to pass through a wrought iron gate.
I tried to lift him clear (I think it was a boy because of his antlers) but it was hopeless. The antlers had gone through the wrought iron and caught as I tried to pull his head back. I summoned Philippa. He seemed to appreciate we were there to help, and did not struggle. Very carefully, as I held the deer, Philippa eased his antlers and head back through the hole in the gate and we gently pulled his legs free before laying him back on the ground. At first he just lay there, letting me stroke him. Philippa (who is an advanced nurse practitioner) checked for fractures, but apart from a couple of abrasions and a tip missing from one of his antlers the deer seemed intact.
We encouraged him to get up, but immediately he fell over, screaming, wriggling and scrabbling at the ground. Maybe he had internal damage? Philippa contacted our local wildlife rescue organisation (she knew one of the proprietors as her daughter goes to the local school with Philippa’s children).
The advice was that when deer are traumatised they becomes wild and lash out, but once they get over the shock they usually become mobile again. “Leave it for 2 hours” she suggested. “If it is still unable to walk bring it over for treatment.”
We left the deer under a bush. Two hours later I returned. I was bracing myself for it still to be lying there – or dead. But there was no deer anywhere to be seen.
Happy ending
2 days later I saw a little Muntjac in the garden with the tip of an antler missing. It looked healthy and happy but was well away from the gates.
And those gates? Well no TLC is on the horizon but they are to be treated with sheets of animal-proof wire mesh to prevent further Deer Gate episodes. They will not look so elegant but in future neither we nor our local Muntjacs will be traumatised.
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A happy new year to all of you who read this. If you have not already subscribed I do ask you to. I plan to up my rate of postings in the new year and you wouldn’t want to miss any would you????
I concur, I can quite imagine Amélie causing at the very least a minor civil war. Maybe those gates will get the care they need when we have more than 3 minutes of daylight!