I've known, for a long time, about the white deer in our county.   I've heard about them.  I know folks who have seen them.  But I think on some level I must have doubted.  Doubted they were really that white or even doubted they actually exist, doubted the observers.  

Coming home from a long day out, last night, Riley spotted a white white tailed deer.  It was dusk and I turned the car around as fast as I could.  We doubled back to the spot - an acre of unfenced backyard pasture in a semi rural neighborhood.   And there it was.  Like something from a storybook, something from The Forbidden Forest, a unicorn with no horn.  White as frost kissed egg shells, gleaming in the dusk, grazing next to normal brown white tailed deer.  We looked as long as the fast fading light allowed, a breath-holding moment as time suspending and as fleeting as those things always are.

Except to raise and lower its head, it never moved.  It grazed as regal and unconcerned as all the deer around this liberal suburban county where dogs live in pens and men hunt with mouse pads and tv remotes.    I tried hard to see a rack and determine gender.  Perhaps it was a doe.  Perhaps I really did see the rich brown antlers I thought I saw.  Impossible to know for sure.  I wanted to see antlers, looked for them, but can't trust my eyes.  It was getting too dark.   We looked until we regretfully drove away.  The deer could still be standing there now, for all I know.