The doe and her skipper for whom I politely stopped my Island Explorer bus in Bar Harbor Friday morning were nice. The skipper waited to cross the street until Mom Doe gave him the nod. She looked at me too, either saying, "I appreciate your not running over my little one," or "I wonder if that great big bus will eat my little one."

But she at least spoke, maybe.

And the three we saw on the same day and same bus at Seawall Campground also were polite. The spikehorn buck, doe, and skipper posed for the crowd of Ecuadorian students, who hollered "thank you" and snapped photos as fast as they could. I couldn't hear what the three said, but they may have said something.

Which is a lot nicer behavior and words than we usually get from our relatives. You know what 'they' say, "You can pick your deer, but you're stuck with the relatives that came with the whole messy deal of being born."

One stuck-with relative, Dolores' cousin, appeared, uninvited -- in fact, moved to -- the coast of Maine. Since we became poor (which occurred several years ago), she hasn't been friendly. Back when she was, however, she provided some fun for us.

We stopped short of the real opportunity for fun she provided with her winter phone call. She had phoned to exclaim about the visitor to her dooryard.

"There's a big white bird outside!" said the recent emigrant from Colorado.

"Oh really," Dolores replied. "That's interesting."

Imagine a big white bird on the coast of Maine. Wonder what it might have been. Whatever it might have been, Dolores didn't share with her cousin her guess as to what the big white bird might have been.

But she and I plotted to drive to Cousin's house when she was at work after our making a wooden set of bird feet -- or maybe just one (doesn't matter which since we never made it) -- and making tracks in the snow with the wooden bird feet.

Being careful, of course, not to frighten any real big white birds hanging around the same yard.

We blew that chance for fun provided by a relative. Spring came.

Then there was my mean little sister (aren't all little sisters mean?), who phoned me about 20 years ago from the state of confusion caused by too-many relatives -- oops, wrong state -- Pennsylvania, where I had been born a long, long time ago.

She said, "I'll never come to Maine."

"Thanks," I replied. "You've helped me make a major life's decision."

I've stayed in Maine ever since and hope to reside here happily ever after. Hope the Department of Homeland Security is keeping a careful watch at our borders for attempted crossings by mean little sisters.

Two of our relatives, my two sons, fall into that same category of not being as dear as those deer. Both phone once in a blue moon (you can calculate how often that is by how often you see a blue moon), if they want something. One wanted a house we owned. The other wanted us to join a scam and 'invest' in land in Maine.

The one, of course, didn't actually offer any way to help with the mortgage we owed on the house. We have since leased it out. The other we haven't heard from again, after we informed him there wasn't much land in Maine.

One of my brothers-in-law visited us once and borrowed our canoe. Which wasn't too bad, until I ran screaming toward the beach while trying to hide my eyes so I didn't have to look as he drove it into the gravel shore, the keel grating its way inland some distance. Too many cowboy movies, you remember, the ones where the cowboys with big white hats paddle canoes while chasing the bad guys wearing big black hats and riding black horses (Maine bad cowboy guys would have ridden hosses).

But those cowboys never slammed my canoe into the shore.

Two more are actually as nice as the doe -- and maybe as nice as the three at Seawall, depending on what they may or may not have said to us as we watched them from the bus. One daughter, not deer, routinely sends e-mails and online photos of the home she and her husband have made in North Carolina, which home they share with Buster the dog. The other, who lives in western Maine with her hard-working, intelligent, nice husband, comes with that husband to visit us periodically.

Other relatives worth good mention, although their eyes were never as big and cute as those of the doe, were Dolores' brother and sister-in-law and my parents.

When we were busy becoming poor our also-poor old car bit the dust by blowing her gasket and dying more or less on the spot in Hannaford's parking lot. We were poor enough to buy 'Bobby Beater,' an ancient Subaru which toted us around awhile despite a strange clicking noise coming from the left rear wheel. Dolores's brother and sister-in-law rode to our rescue by financing an almost new car for us, a cute little Toyota which not only didn't make those annoying clicking sounds but who got -- and still does -- about 45 miles per gallon on the open road.

She -- you've heard of her as 'Ellie' -- also does great on those strange sort-of roads to which I subject her on my jaunts to do volunteer work on the Appalachian Trail. Twice on said sort-of roads, it was so lonely and wildernessey I was nearly afraid to turn her off. But when I did, she, of course, started right up to flee in case any hungry moose had their sites on us.

Mom was okay as relatives go. She fed me, made me go to school for which someday I'll forgive her, walked on Pennsylvania's trails -- which existed then and some still do, and was part of the getting me to Maine scenario. She examined my leg when the rabid fox bit my long pants to make sure I wouldn't be slobbering the next day. She advised me of a few key points in life, such as, "Your whole life you'll always have fight for what's already yours."

Did you know that? I have learned it. Mom was right.

But Dad, my father, was a great relative. He stayed at the same job on the Pennsylvania, then Penn Central, Railroad most of his adult life. This willingness to leave the house every morning to argue with the other guys in the office made it possible for him to provide me with my childhood home in old Penn's Woods.

It also made it possible to bring us to Maine, when I was myself just a skipper, by Pullman to Boston or Portland (and a two-car wonder pulled by a diesel switcher from Portland north), where I met Maine.

Maine's been a great relative. She kind of adopted me. Showed me those quiet places, those farms, those Jersey and Holstein, those mountains, those woods, that mud, those mosquitoes and moose, the many Maineiacs who have become my closest family while befriending and guiding me along the way with their very practical wisdom often nearly hidden in their underplayed humor all these years -- and some more that if I included would make this sentence way too long.

Oh yes, she also showed me that cute doe, skippers, and the spikehorn the other morning.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2008