sometimes they let me out of the basement

                            

I was surprised I didn't see any deer when I was out hiking the trail and wondered if they were hanging out in our backyard while here I was in the woods.
I recently saw a post by a blogger in Norway about how to deter deer from eating everything in your garden by hanging flags that sort of look like deer butts.  The translation is a little sketchy so I'm not sure I got the reasoning for this.  I'll be checking back to see how it works.