Family Life

Every now and then a female deer comes through our property, on her way to the river and wetlands across the street. Yesterday she was alone, and today she had company–a tiny fawn. The pair wandered around our back yard for a while, long enough for Debbie to gather the boys at the window to watch, and to take some photos. At one point the baby suckled, head-butting its mother as it stood on unsteady legs. Eventually the pair passed out of view by the side of the house, heading toward the river, but only the doe appeared out the other side, vanishing into the woods.

The little fawn had been left behind.

Joel was incoherent with excitement when I got home from work, and the family led me to where the baby was curled up beside the house. Tiny, alone, still, blending very well into the grass and earth. We watched for a few minutes, chatting with our neighbours who came to see what the fuss was all about, and then went inside. I took Debbie’s camera and went back out to get a closer view once the crowd dispersed.

The fawn stood up awkwardly as I came around the corner of the house, but didn’t seem overly concerned at my presence. I quietly crouched and videoed for five minutes, while it sniffed the air, the wall, the ground, and made some tentative wobbly steps. It wasn’t much taller than the dandelions.

Eventually the mosquitoes descended in force, so I retreated back into the house and left the fawn to its wanderings. It settled in a gap between a tree and the fence and tried to make itself invisible again.

Our neighbours think the mother might be away for a day or two, but will return. It seems harsh that she apparently abandoned her baby in an urban setting, but we’re glad she left it with us.

Over a month ago, on Friday, April 11 I moved into a temporary office at work, an event I had been dreading. Immediately life spiraled down into gloom and despair and depression. I discovered that things could actually get worse than my worst fears. From that point on, there was no joy, no desire to create, no blogging. I closed in on myself. It was all I could do just to survive, just to make it through the day.

Sunday night (three days ago) marked a turning point, and the sun has started to peek out from behind the clouds. Today’s birth seemed an appropriate topic to renew posting once again.

Over the next couple of weeks I expect to fill in some of the gaps in the past month, and I’ll be backdating those posts to the appropriate day. This will likely play havoc with those of you following along on the web page, and I’m not sure how it’ll work with RSS readers. Blog posts are supposed to be chronological, not jump around all over the place.

Note: the video is not terribly exciting, except that it’s a newborn fawn, which is tremendously exciting if you get excited at such things.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 11:23 pm. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.