Surprise House Guest
When I went down to my neighbor’s place to feed his dogs last week, I had the unfortunate luck of finding a fawn that wasn’t more than a day or two old. Or more accurately, he found me as he teetered up on wobbly legs, desperately looking for a bite to eat. He was a little scraped up, pretty hungry, and hanging out under the porch with a couple of dogs and a rooster that mysteriously appeared one day last fall, much like this deer had just done. The older dog, Cindy, is kind of a crank (or at the very least, tragically misunderstood) and doesn’t care much for anyone besides the other dog, Daisy, and, as it turns out, this rooster. I guess Daisy decided she also needed a pet of her own because she had already adopted this little fawn. As she licked it clean, I pondered what to do.
If I had found this fawn in the woods or out in a field, I would have left it alone because its mother would probably be somewhere nearby. This was a little different, though, because I couldn’t come up with any reasons why a doe would leave her baby with the motley band of fowl and canines. I decided to let it be for the day. Maybe the mom would come back? If the baby was still there that night, I’d decide what to do then.
When I came back, it was curled up under the steps, so I fed it some canned milk mixed with water in a baby bottle and then loaded it in the pickup and brought it home. Three days passed with me feeding it every four hours or so. Everyone kept telling me I only needed to feed it every six hours, but if it didn’t get the bottle more frequently, it would make this awful high-pitched EEP! sound that would wake me from a very sound sleep--even when it was outside. I desperately tried to find a home for it. Since it was a buck, I figured that once it got old enough it would return into the wild on its own. Lots of people suggested other neighbors they knew who’d raised fawns before. This turned out to be a bit of red herring because I soon realized that anyone who’d done it once had already learned their lesson and didn’t want to do it again.
I called Fish and Game and talked to a guy who was knowledgeable and very nice, but wasn’t terribly interested in helping me. He basically said that a lot of fawns die every year and that’s just how nature works. This wasn’t news to me, of course, but I also couldn’t stand back and watch it die slowly under the porch from dehydration or starvation. Finally, some of my neighbors agreed to take the little critter, who, after three days was doing pretty darn well on the canned milk. They kept it for a couple nights, and then became worried they were getting too attached. After all, it was a male and when it grew up, there was a good chance somebody might shoot it. They made some phone calls and found it a home at a wildlife rescue place in town.
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