You know a varmint: a person or animal considered undesirable, obnoxious and troublesome. This summer there are lots of varmints out and around. Just a few days ago, for instance, a neighbor spotted Paul Cayer’s pickup loaded with Have a Heart traps; he was transporting six skunks he’d captured that morning to new homes.

Varmints.

Skunks are about the only varmints we haven’t spotted here. A few weeks ago, you may remember, there was that brassy bear. Shortly thereafter, Paul Cayer, who has rescued us from plagues of squirrels, first gray, then red, stopped by to help us figure out what ate all my broccoli seedlings. “From what you’ve told me,” he said, “I think it was probably a deer.” But he walked down to the garden in time to see a big old woodchuck waddling back into the woods. My husband got the smoke bombs down and we hoped they were the end of the woodchucks.

Oh, the woodchucks were real enough, and probably did eat the broccoli.

But Cayer was right. There was a deer. There is a deer. Not your run-of-the-mill deer either: Out by his barn one day last week, Bob Colby sensed a presence besides his dog Molly. He turned to look. Doris Doe was nuzzling Molly’s nose.

But Doris, aka Doe Doe, spends most of her time in or near our garden.

She is not only sociable, she’s fearless. Approach her waving your arms and bellowing orders when she’s working on the lettuce and she’ll reward you with a gentle gaze, her work uninterrupted.

And – this is strange – there’s no fawn in sight. Did Doe Doe abandon her fawn on the Andover Road? Was it her offspring I almost hit? The same fawn that Burt deFrees’ pickup narrowly missed?

What to do? Even 50 years ago, the game warden took a dim view of Jim’s grandmother’s strategy: Move rocking chair to garden. Spend moonlit hours rocking, loaded rifle at the ready should the deer appear. Big fines. Dead Doe Doe. No, no.

Eureka! Stuart Martin’s tried and true deer-scare strategy: We hitched up a radio (Boston boom box) and set it at the garden’s edge. Golden oldies and country fare 24-hours-a-day, full blast. Next morning we looked out to see Doris sniffing at the radio, tapping her dainty hoof. … Doris is a varmint all right, obnoxious, troublesome – also, playful, intelligent and beautiful.

Linda Farr Macgregor lives with her husband, Jim, in Rumford. She is a freelance writer and author of “Rumford Stories.”