My friend Tammy called to tell me that her neighbor had found an abandoned fawn in the backyard. I rolled on over, and sure enough, there it was:
They are hoping the mom will come back tonight.
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[…] I forgot, but an emailer reminded me- the doe came and picked up her fawn. […]
SGEW
I just hope this ends well.
Laura W
Jillie!
sarah in brooklyn
oh god, poor baby. is there someone you can call if the mom doesn’t return?
kid bitzer
happened in my front yard yesterday.
my dog chased a deer from left to right out the front window.
then the deer chased my dog back from right to left. wtf?
so i chased off the deer. then it snuck around the back of the house. so i chased it off again.
after a while i’m thinking, “what is with this deer?”
and finally the penny dropped.
i looked under a bush in our front yard, and there was the fawn.
luckily, our dog had not found it. i called him inside. i went inside. i stood at the front window. i saw the deer–or the doe, as i should say–come by and pick up the fawn. and off they went.
i’d say leave this little one alone, and mom will be back before evening time.
demkat620
We are over run with deer here. It wasn’t a really cold winter so, there will be alot of them this summer. And alot of them will get hit by cars.
So very sad to see a dead deer on the roadside.
kid bitzer
oh, and i should say–those little guys are cute.
where i live, the deer are so damned thick on the ground that we hate them. they eat everything–no one can garden. you just get sick to death of seeing them in your yard.
but even for a hardened deer-hater, a little 10-pound fawn is awesome cutesie wootsie with extra wittle-bittie sauce.
ilsita
Here’s a good PSA about finding fawns: archives.record-eagle.com/2007/may/30fawns.htm
John Cole
@kid bitzer: They are not so bad here. We still have a lot of woods for them to do their thing in and we don’t feel overrun. And technically, we are the ones that overran them. The areas where deer are most problematic seem to usually be where the most development is. There is a relationship.
Jon
What a beautiful creature. I am sure that the mother will return if she is alive and healthy. If that doesn’t happen, there is this information.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Don’t touch it or approach it. The doe leaves her fawns somewhere (it may look pretty obvious to us) and comes back to it. If a person handles the fawn it may attract predators or repel mom.
REN
I read somewhere that fawns are scentless for some months after birth. This helps explain why your dog did not find it. Deer do leave fawns, sometimes for hours. She will most likely return.
TimO
Beautiful!
Sir Nose'D
Kommrade is exactly right–this is what lady deer do this time of year.
Brick Oven Bill
I do not eat veal, as I do not personally think it is ethical, and beef is just fine with me. But is there a venison equivalent to veal? ‘Deal’ maybe?
estraven
This happened to us last year. I was so worried, but we looked up some info and it’s common for the mother to leave the fawn for a whole day. And sure enough, at the end of the day, the fawn was gone … we saw what we thought was the same fawn and its mom a day or two later.
What we learned was DON’T approach or touch the fawn. Usually the fawn has not been abandoned–the mom will come back for it.
Laura W
@Brick Oven Bill: BOB wins.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@REN: And this is the part I left out. Fawns don’t have an odor that others critters can detect and putting your odor on the fawn could attract animals that associate us with food in the form of garbage (fox, coyote).
I am a bit jealous though. I once lived in a place where it was not uncommon to look out the back window and see deer laying down in the yard and we go hiking all over the place but I’ve yet to come across a fawn.
Jennifer
Do check back for the little critter.
It sometimes happens that a doe will have two fawns, and abandon one. It’s rare, but it does sometimes happen. If that ends up being the case with this little one, baby deer can be bottle-raised.
Confessor
It looks lonely. Why don’t you go and give it a hug?
(Ignore; I tried to make a funny “sarcasm tag” construction using HTML character entities. It didn’t work.)
JenJen
This is easily the most manipulative thing you have ever done, Cole. So, great! Bambi is gonna haunt my dreams. Thanks ever so.
Laura W
Coincidental timing here? I think not.
It’s a sign if I ever saw a sign. John needs a deer to go with his new garden. I think Tunch can still spoon with this baby.
DeerCam!
jayackroyd
My reading says that does generally drop two fawns, and then separate them–tending to them alternately. I imagine the doe will be back.
REN
We had a neighbor who rescued a fawn standing by his mothers body on the side of the road. They bottle fed it and raised it like it was a dog. The deer ate out of a bowl in the house and went for rides in his truck. When I would walk past his house he would come out and follow me until we got back.I’ve got some pictures of him around here somewhere.
When he started to become a buck was when trouble started, and he had to be relocated back to the forest. Wild animals are better off left in the wild for all concerned.
I don’t envy him having to tell his young children what happened to Bucky.
Andrew J. Lazarus
Urban deer are a pest, both here and where my parents live. And I’m hungry.
Bad Horse's Filly
@kommrade reproductive vigor: What Kommrade said. I worked with the DOW for a while and the most common calls they got were “abandoned” fawns, that were not abandoned. They took the opportunity to educate.
Also learned during this experience that most mountain lions are killed by cars.
JenJen
A friend of mine who lives in the country, outside Cincinnati, told me he stalked (with binoculars) 45 head of whitetail deer through his property last night. He’d been wondering where they went at night, because they decimated his soy crop already and he was growing very concerned that there were far too many of them this year. When he finally found them, he couldn’t believe he’d found a real herd, in such a rural-but-not-too-rural area.
Not sure what’s going on in these parts, but I’m seeing more and more deer this late spring just on back roads than I’ve seen in years.
monad
@John Cole:
Deer surveys at Big Meadows, in Shenandoah National Park:
• Fall nighttime spotlight counts from 1999- 2007 have
yielded an average of 182 deer per square mile (n=75) in the
BMA.
• Single night Fall counts from 1999- 2007 have yielded
relative deer densities ranging from 75- 451 deer per square mile.
It’s nuts in the Blue Ridge of Virginia — there are huge areas where literally every forested tract of land, large or small, has a little bathtub ring at the level where deer can browse up to, below which there are almost no shrubs or tree seedlings.
JenJen
@ilsita: This is terrific advice on how to (not) handle a bedded fawn. Pass this on to your friends, John; don’t know about your area, but we have seen a rise in coyotes, and this little baby is at risk if too many humans make a fuss over her.
Coyotes are scaredy-dogs for the most part when in contact with people, but they strike at night, it’s the time of the year when moms are teaching their cubs how to hunt, they’re smart, and although you can’t see them, they’re probably watching you.
wrb
The moms do park them then go off and graze. Some guys working for us found one and brought it back.
Our big malamute/lab cross (Jimmy) adopted it for the day. They seem to have adored each other. We have great pictures of them staring into each others’ eyes, of Jimmy washing its bottom, of it running after Jimmy etc.
That evening we put it back and the mother came and picked it up.
gary
So was it tasty?
Joe Buck
Deer used to be kept in check by predators: coyotes, wolves, mountain lions. In areas where the predators have been eliminated, the deer population has exploded.
Joshua Norton
Apropos of nothing mentioned here, I’ve always wondered why strippers and bimbos used the name “Bambi”. Bambi was a boy and grew up into a big butch stag, as I recall.
Weird.
PaulW
Mom deer oughta come back when the hew-mans stop buggin.
JenJen
@Joshua Norton: You know, that is an excellent point. It never occurred to me until just now!
This reminds me of the Showtime series “Secret Diary of a Call Girl”, and a funny line once, put on your best Cockney accent for the full effect:
Belle: So why do they call you Bambi?
Bambi: Oh, because when I was just a babes, me mum got shot. So it’s what the wankers at school started callin’ me.
Barry
A doe was leaving her two fauns in my backyard last summer (between an overgrown garden and an overgrown hedge. They do that; she should be back. If not, then you’ve got a new pet.
Arlie
Mama deer will often leave behind their fawns to go out foraging for food. Fawns generally can’t keep up, so they hide in tall grass until Mama comes back. As many people here have said, just leave it alone and Mama will come back.
joe from Lowell
The relationship is that deer are edge-species, meaning they thrive in areas that have a lot of woods next to fields. Like raccoons, they like this type of landscape even more than they like deep woods.
So when people come along into a wooded area and carve out subdivisions with nice grassy/shrubby yards next to wooded lots, it isn’t just a matter of us invading their habitat, but of us creating a habitat that is more favorable to them.
On the flip side, creatures that thrive best in deep woods away from edges get screwed by this process – and this category often includes the predators that eat deer, which jacks their numbers up even further.
I’ve driven out to western PA a couple of times, and the highways look like something out of Dante’s Inferno, with blood and gore and carcasses all over the place. It’s genuinely horrific.
Personally, I think human have a duty to replace the predation function – and before any animal-rights types object, ask yourself what it would mean if 100 million Americans replaced a quarter of the beef in their diet with venison, in terms of animal cruelty.
mr. whipple
If not, it’ll make for some very tender eats.
((ducking)))
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
@wrb: If you have great pictures of inter-species canoodling, PLEASE post them!
wrb
Around here (Oregon) deer have learned to think of the sound of a chain saw as a dinner bell.
Start a saw, the deer come running.
Someone is about to drop a bunch of goodies into the range of their reach.
Johnny B. Guud
The saddest thing.
I think the best approach is to leave it be until the mother comes back (I see this has been noted several times in this thread).
Here in Central Jersey, we come across deer pretty much weekly. Unfortunately, the insane development in the area forces them onto the major roadways.
Just earlier this week, saw a young deer who met their unfortunate and untimely fate on the ramp to a major highway.
And what Joe @ 35 said.
Isn’t there some kind of subprime meltdown or something going on? Enough with the developments! GAH!!!
Joshua Norton
@wrb: My cats did the same thing when they heard an electric can opener. Finally had to stop using it.
wrb
Mary:
Sure. It will be a few days because the Jimmy pictures on on a sick computer.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
@Bad Horse’s Filly:
Has that discouraged you from your search for a pet emu?
wobbly
If the rubber-necking humans would just back away from this animal…
Yeah, the mom will come back.
This is not an “abandoned” fawn. This is deer daycare.
The mom goes off to browze, after first making sure that her fawn is safely hidden under the shrubbery. Mothers need to eat and drink to replenish the fluids necessary to refill their teats with milk.
I really can’t believe that there are so many mammals on the planet who don’t know about the life cycles of deer.
Or women.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Deer and cats, living together…
shelley matheis
Looks like your friend also has a lot of garlic-mustard plants in her yard too. Wish the deer would eat those
Col. Klink
Don’t tell Newt Gingrich, he’ll go out and kill it just to show what a “manly man” he is.
MikeJ
Whatever you do, don’t let any ticks from the nesting spot get on you. Lyme disease is horrible. Easy to treat if diagnosed, but very unpleasant until treatment starts.
MikeJ
My cat came running at the sound of the coffee grinder. That noise meant my gf was going to steam milk, which meant the cat was going to get a drink.
Dreggas
Some of the tenderest venison laying right there…..I prefer it grown though.
gex
@joe from Lowell:
I could never personally hunt, but I have no problems with those who do. However, I would like it if expand/sprawl wasn’t our primary development mode. We need to think about preserving habitat and natural environments and try to develop more densely. Otherwise this is a recipe for exterminating all the predators via habitat loss and justifying our hunting to extermination the species that no longer have predators.
wobbly
Even the dumbest redstate deer hunter would know what to do in this situation.
Go away.
J.
I’m coming to get you, Bambi!
Honey, guess what we’re having for dinner tonight? Venison!
MikeJ
Sadly they wouldn’t have the reading comprehension to see that John didn’t solicit advice.
Comrade Darkness
The deer are definitely getting more populous. Tall fences do work for gardens. I finally gave up and went with that. They also will not jump a double fence, so you can get away with a shorter fence and a mere single wire a few feet away surrounding that.
This would easily be solved by a second great depression.
Or, so I’ve heard, having certain immigrant populations move into your neighborhood. The ones accustomed to buying their meat alive. You can just imagine the joy of finding so much free food wandering through your yard.
linda
@Col. Klink:
newt’s target of choice — giraffes.
this is truly one of the most idiotic statements evah; and to see his hold on the wdc media is pathetic:
“If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for thirty days because they get infections and they don’t have upper body strength. I mean, some do, but they’re relatively rare. On the other hand, men are basically little piglets, you drop them in the ditch, they roll around in it, doesn’t matter, you know. These things are very real. On the other hand, if combat means being on an Aegis-class cruiser managing the computer controls for twelve ships and their rockets, a female may be again dramatically better than a male who gets very, very frustrated sitting in a chair all the time because males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes.”
* Address, “Renewing American Civilization,” Reinhardt College, (January 7, 1995)
PaminBB
We get tons of dear coming through our yard here in SE PA, and had one of these little guys left in our yard last year. Mom eventually came back.
John Cole
@MikeJ: Thanks. I was able to get pics because the dear is at the base of their deck in between the deck and a tree. None of us were dumb enough to approach her.
J. Michael Neal
I hate deer. While I was a pizza delivery guy, I was twice stuck behind a group of them blocking the road out on the edges of Roseville. One time, it took a half hour to get them out of the way. There is nothing you can do that will get them to move.
As far as I’m concerned, the only legitimate justification for discharging firearms inside city limits is to kill these stupid fuckers. Squirrels I like; at this point, the only ones left in Minneapolis are the ones smart enough to look both ways before crossing the street, and they don’t dawdle.
Belvoir
What a beautiful animal. Nature is amazing, an artist. I wonder if this one’s a male, there’s little tufts of black hair where antlers might grow if that’s the case. There’s a word for our finding baby animals cute- “neoteny”. We humans are hard-wired to feel protective of vulnerable babies, either human or animal. There’s theories I’ve read about how cuteness, or neoteny, is a survival mechanism in higher mammals.
Puppies, kittens, fawns- they inspire protective instincts not far from how we feel towards babies. Built-in instinct.
Where I live on Eastern LI, we’ve been seing a lot more deer coming down from the northern, wooded side of our narrow fork, down to our sandier, more populated south side. It’s only a few miles. I do realize the concerns about deer overpopulation, but I still find them a marvel, these large graceful creatures loping across the lawn. I don’t know how they do it, survive, with the overdevelopment where I live in the past 20 years.
AhabTRuler
Yeah, been there done that. Especially in the fall, 18 wheeler + Deer = big, big mess. Now repeat once every twenty miles or so.
My experience with deer and car involves clipping one whilst driving 70 on the I-95/495. Fortunately, I didn’t hit it head-on (just on its head) and I was able to maintain control, although I am still not sure how. The car and I survived, the deer didn’t.
stupid, silly animals.
gbear
@Comrade Darkness:
I used to have bunnies running everywhere around my yard and neighborhood, but once an area down on the Mississippi River flats below my house became popular as a homeless camp, the bunny problem disappeared.
gbear
@J. Michael Neal:
I see you’re in the Twin Cities. I watched a deer run head-on into a mini-van on Snelling Avenue(!) right in front of Macalester College a few years back. It must have wandered up the Summit boulevard and was smack in the middle of the city before it panicked and started running full throttle down one of the busiest streets in town. It was pretty sad.
freelancer
I don’t know what you people are oohing and aww-ing about they’re rats with hooves.
I may have mentioned it last year, but here’s a good look, $6k worth.
Bey
We have a large mule deer population on base, along with an elk herd, coyotes, bears, a few mountain lions, and a really huge flock of wild turkeys. Summer before last we had a young moose wander through.
The turkeys are the meanest. The deer will just give you the hairy eyeball while crossing the road but the turkeys will take after your car.
neddie jingo
Indeed. As my wise old Holocaust-survivor religion professor once remarked, “We are guests in their country.”
Napoleon
I didn’t read any thing up thread but I saw on tv several years ago what you should do, and have personally had this happen to me several times (I get a lot of deer in my yard). Don’t touch it, mom will come back. The young ones can not be smelled by coyotes or whatever would eat them around here so mom intentionally will leave the young one and come back later to get the kid.
gus
@Bey: Which base is that? With elk, must be out west.
Years ago, I worked at an Air Force base in the midwest. Deer lived in a protected area near the flightline, but as their numbers increased they began to spend a lot of time wandering back and forth across one of the runways. Pilots were not happy.
So, after several unsuccessful efforts to thwart the deer, the colonel running the base decided to send a couple of NCO’s out with rifles to thin the herd. He was careful to line up all the necessary legal ducks. Everyone involved, including myself, was pledged to secrecy.
The night before the “thinning” began, the colonel asked me if he’d take a hit if the press picked up on what he was doing. I replied: “Well, you’re shooting Bambi. They’d have a field day.”
And, of course, someone squealed and it was in the morning papers and on TV.
The pilots were happy, though. No more worries about a stray deer wreaking havoc with a B-52 or KC-135.
Shade Tail
@freelancer:
Lots of animals are rats with a different anatomy. Rat behavior is generally a pretty good survival tactic, after all.
Pigeons are rats with wings. Seagulls are pigeons of the ocean.
tavella
It’s true about the Blue Ridge. My dad has a house in the mountains, right up against a national park, and he gets huge herds through the place. His neighbor has an apple orchard and a damage permit, so my dad eats venison all year round, I take 50 pounds or so home with me at Xmas, and he still has a lot to donate to the local food banks.
Beef is so incomparably lame, once you’ve had properly treated venison. Unbelievably tender and flavorful, and I can eat it in good conscience, knowing that the animal had a good life and a clean death.
Tara the antisocial social worker
The doe is probably out foraging for food, and will return in the evening if she hasn’t by now. This happened at my folks’ home; the doe apparently decided they were acceptable babysitters.
wvng
It’s not just the Blue Ridge. Deer overpopulation is causing severe damage to forests throughout the Northeast. To the point that Oak/Hickory forests are dying out. Very little in the way of new recruitment of dominant tree species. Forest floors denuded with severe loss of both plant and animal species diversity.
My organization runs an environmental forum for high school students every fall: "Oh Deer!" Environmental Forum 2008. You can get a pretty broad rundown of the issues related to deer overpopulation at the link.
As for what to do about the fawn, the thread covered it pretty well. Leave it alone and mommy will pick it up later.
freelancer
@Shade Tail:
FACEPALM
trollhattan
I’m surprised nobody’s linked to this:
youtube.com/watch?v=fXx4vXFESek&feature=player_embedded
Think of the possibilities!
Damned at Random
We’ve had a doe with a couple of “towheads” hanging around our place since fall. We were wondering if she would just keep them with her, but yesterday we saw her chasing one of the youngsters off. We surmised that this year’s fawn would be making an appearance soon.
We’ve seen some with faint spots, ut none as young as the one in the picture
Comrade Kevin
So, did the mother come back?
Anne Laurie
My sister’s partner grew up in far-northern Sweden. She reacts to Santa’s reindeer the way a New Yorker would react to Lester the Easter Rat.