Within a week of Mary Jo Mozurak moving in, the deer showed up.

She named one of them Bubbles for the tumor on her side. Sabrina, with the dark face, was the mean one, bullying the other does and picking fights with stags. Leeza turned up one day with a broken leg that healed awkwardly. Patches was gentle and always with her fawns, Clyde, Cici and — Mozurak's favorite — Cornelius.

One morning, she saw him through the window, standing atop the stone staircase, staring in at her. So she went outside, scooped up some deer feed and approached.

Cornelius was hungry and unafraid. Mozurak was eager to oblige.

“He ate right out of my hand,” she recalls with a smile. “After that, I'm addicted now. When a day goes by and I don't see him, I'm bummed. I think, maybe tonight he'll come.”

Mozurak isn't even supposed to be living in this house. A Mt. Washington resident for 18 years, she decided a couple of years ago to move to the North Hills. She wanted something quiet, out of the way. But every home she liked went to a higher bidder.

Then her agent told her to check out a house in Ross, though it had none of the features Mozurak was seeking in a home.

When she arrived at the open house, she saw crows — her favorite bird — in the backyard. Then someone said something about deer in the backyard.

Mozurak fell in love.

“So private, and surrounded by woods,” she says. “It was more than I could afford, but I bid on it anyway.”

She added a personal note to the homeowners: I love the property and will care for it always. May God bless you.

At closing, she learned that her bid was not the highest. The note had swayed the sellers.

“It was God working behind the scenes,” Mozurak says.

Then Cornelius and his friends arrived.

“When a deer walks up to you and takes food out of your hand — I mean, I feel like they're mine,” she says. “We have a relationship.”

So every morning she looks for them. And every morning, there they are, up to 10 of them some days, standing in her yard, waiting for her. At night, when Mozurak arrives home from work, they emerge from darkened thickets.

“They're interactive with me, and that's why I love them,” Mozurak says. “I couldn't do this with squirrels.”

Some people think she shouldn't do this with deer, either.

Friends caution that she could get hurt, that they're wild animals and carry disease. State game commission officials say that feeding deer is not illegal, but it is harmful. It increases the risk of disease, makes the deer vulnerable to car crashes, alters their behavioral patterns. The problem is so severe that the commission distributes a brochure, “ Please Don't Feed the Deer .”

“They're well meaning people; they do care about the deer,” wildlife conservation officer Dan Puhala says of those like Mozurak. “But they just don't realize what they're doing.”

Mozurak acknowledges such concerns. She counters with her own reasoning.

“People send me articles about why you shouldn't feed the deer, but here's why you should: Their lives are short, and I'm going to make their lives a little bit easier,” she says. “I don't apologize for my love of animals. God gives everybody their interests and talents, and that's just mine.”

She has always been this way. As a child, she dreamed of being a veterinarian and brought home sick or injured animals. To this day, she prays for cars to slow down at deer crossing signs and regularly fosters kittens for the Humane Society.

Standing near her back door, she turns and looks at her sprawling yard — it's as much the deer's as it is hers. Patches is nibbling at the ground, tail twitching, black eyes staring. Two stags stand nearby. A fawn jumps playfully among them.

“This place — with the deer, the crows, the skunks, the groundhogs, the bunnies — is just an animal lover's dream,” she says. “People don't understand. (They say) deer have ticks, you might get hurt. But I honestly don't even think about that.

“I didn't create this,” she adds. “They were here long before I got here. Some people don't see it that way, but ...”

She stops talking and shrugs.

Then she surveys her land and smiles, at peace with what she sees.

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