Deer Unko

These pictures were taken in August in Nara at Kofukuji temple, the one in my previous post with the very tall pagoda. There are sacred deer that live in Nara (like the kind I posted months ago at Miyajima) that room all over the city. The park is full of them, and therefore the temples in the park are as well. They're quiet friendly, a little too friendly sometimes, when they think you might be carrying something edible.

Last year when I visited Nara the deer didn't have any horns. That was in March 2006, so now in August 2007, a different season, the deer have these huge horns. I was actually quite afraid of them at first. I saw signs with someone trying to pet ones with horns and the outcome didn't look so pretty. These deer seemed pretty well situated here, and it was too hot to move at this time, so I deemed it safe to have my picture taken.


In a previous post months ago, I brought you the monkey turd(or in Japanese we say, "unko") story. So, now everytime we see an animal turd, we just laugh. So, Markian wanted me to take a picture of the unko to add it to our collection.


This deer was extremely friendly, and no he didn't make the poo! Another deer did it, but the stupid poo was in my short which Markian thought was funny. There are plenty of deer turns lying about when there are thousands of them running about in the town. It doesn't matter how fast people are trying to clean it up. Brown turds sure show up on white gravel.

So this deer was super friendly. Below you can see Markian petting his antlers. He let me pet them too, and they were really fuzzy and soft like velvet. He was such a nice big deer!