Actually, it’s already waited a few days now, mostly because I either didn’t have the time to post or wasn’t in the blogging mood; since it was this past Friday, it really could have just squeaked in as an ‘Estate Find XXa’ or ‘XX.V’ – did the ancient Romans use decimals? Maybe lower-case Roman numerals, like, ‘XXv?’ Whatever.
Out with the headlamp, because more things happens at night, I was passing through the bamboo and cypress-knee jungle along the north edge of the pond when I got a strong reflection from up ahead, seeming larger than most spiders. It also wasn’t reddish, like the frogs and toads tend to be, or blue-green like the spiders – it was white. I advanced on it, keeping my eye on the spot because, once I get close enough, the increasing angle between the headlamp and my eyes cancels out the reflection. I closed on the spot and couldn’t initially find the culprit, even though I knew it should be right around this medium-brown mossy lump, a moss I hadn’t seen before.
Forest for the trees…
Really, I was focused on finding something about a hundred times smaller, plus the outline of the fawn wasn’t apparent at the angle that I approached from, but yeah, I felt stupid when it all came together. This is of course a white-tailed deer fawn (Odocoileus virginianus,) probably not more than a week old and certainly still in the nursing stage; it was roughly the size of a terrier, perhaps not even two kilos, though I did not pick it up. The reflection that I caught was its eye, and it was well aware of my presence but didn’t move a millimeter.
This perfectly normal: while the fawns are very young, they don’t have a lot of energy, and so they are placed in a safe spot by their mother and simply stay put until mom returns from foraging, which may be hours later. Back in my rehab days, we had to tell people this all the time, because they were always convinced that the fawn was orphaned or abandoned. I can recall the undisguised skepticism on the faces of one young couple as we insisted that they take it back and leave it where they found it, but they did at least return afterwards and apologize, since mama was waiting right there and snorting at them as they brought the fawn back.
I checked this one for dehydration, because occasionally they are orphaned, but it passed easily; this elicited the only movement from the fawn, a faint flinch as I touched the nape of its neck, and that was all. I checked after a couple of hours, and it was still there, so I deposited a cache of corn nearby for the mom, knowing the fawn wouldn’t touch it. By early morning, however, the fawn was gone, though the corn remained untouched (it disappeared by nightfall.)
We’re keeping a close eye out, since eventually the mother may come through with the fawn in tow once it’s eating solid food; we’re still putting down plenty of corn, ostensibly for the ducks, but the squirrels and deer seem to ignore this stipulation, and whatcha gonna do? Worse, however, was that The Girlfriend had gone to bed early and so didn’t get the chance to see this one in person. You should have seen the unbridled delight on her face when she got to hold a fawn a few years ago, about this same size, whose mother had been killed on the highway. She still has those mothering instincts, though that one went to a licensed rehabilitator.