The noisy fawn

It was on the kids’ last day of school that we first heard it. Husband Joe came inside asking: Is Dion blowing a horn or something?

No, Dion was asleep, his bugle lying on the floor.

Through the open door I heard the sound. Some sort of large bird – a goose?

A deer, Joe said suddenly, placing the sound. A fawn.

We listened for another moment – that’s exactly what it was. A doe had given birth last night, or just now, in the woods a few hundred feet from our porch!

Later that day, Joe texted me a blurry picture of the fawn, standing on bow legs gazing quizzically at the camera, its ears so cartoonishly large they did not fit in the sun-dappled frame. Of course he’d tracked it, I thought with a twang of admiration and jealousy, while I was stuck in the office.

The next morning, we heard the bugle call again. This time – no school bus to get the kids to today – I grabbed my camera and hustled outside in pajamas. This fawn was so loud. Was it a personality thing, like some babies are big criers? Or was something wrong? It must be incredibly dangerous for the fawn to be hollering like that. If I could hear it, so could every fox, coyote, fisher, bear in these woods.

I started toward the bleating, crashing through highbush blueberries up to my thighs (should’ve worn pants), making an embarrassing ruckus as twigs snapped and dry leaves crunched underfoot. Some tracker I was. When my snap-crackle-crunching started, the bleating stopped, of course. Even a fawn born literally yesterday would not mistake that racket for its mama. After getting to the area the bleating had seemed to come from, I scanned and listened – nothing.

Nothing to do but stand silent and wait for the next “Marco!” So I waited. There it was, every few minutes. I was not hollering “Polo!” in response, but I might as well have been. Each time the fawn bleated and I started toward it, the fawn went quiet. When I crashed to the spot I’d last heard a bleat, I’d wait, and wait... and hear the bleat again – from, could it be, the place I’d just come from? Or was the fawn staying put and I was overshooting?

Eventually, my hunger started talking to me – breakfast time! My shins were bloodied from snagging on brambles and branches. It was quite a balancing act to move quickly through this thick underbrush, head up, without tripping on a branch, or, heck, a rattlesnake. It was right around here that we saw a coiled rattler last year, sunning itself.

Sweating in my hoody now, I summoned my energy for one last push. I imagined myself a Navy Seal, running upright with ramrod spine, high-stepping with precision over downed logs, eyes locked on my target, but instead of a gun I had my camera.

It was no use. I was making such a din that I couldn’t listen for the fawn’s movements. I wasn’t going to just suddenly see it, I realized. The dappled light, the thick cover of ferns and bushes, would make spotting a spotted fawn next to impossible. I might hear it, though, if I could only mute myself.

I adjusted my strategy, hopping onto fallen trees whenever I came across them so that I could stand still and survey. I sidestepped onto the driveway whenever I found myself near it, where I could walk quickly and quietly.

An hour later, I was really ready to call it. It was time to have breakfast, flip the laundry, go to work. But every time I headed inside, a bleat called me back.

Finally, a steady series of bleats. The fawn must be really hungry now. Maybe I was keeping the doe away, or she’d gone down to the stream for a drink. Or maybe something had gotten her – a hard labor had left her vulnerable to a predator.

Crouched on the driveway, I peered through the leaf cover, staring hard at the spot where the bleats were coming from. Then I saw it: a blueberry leaf trembled. There was no wind. It trembled again. I locked my gaze onto that leaf as I covered the 30 yards from the driveway. I peered underneath the bush, squinted, peered closer. My God. I would never have found it by sight alone. The fawn was no bigger than a human newborn, impossibly small to be hacking it out here.

The fawn was perfect: liquid eyes, paintbrush eyelashes, velvety ears big as dinghy sails, white spots running in parallel stripes from neck to tail. It did not try to run. It looked exhausted.

I reached out to pick it up, my maternal instinct kicking in, and it wobbled to its feet and stumbled away. Joe told me later that you’re not supposed to touch a fawn; the human smell might make its mom abandon it. Whether or not that’s true, I’m glad I didn’t.

I thought about heating up some raw cows milk, preparing a bottle in case the doe didn’t show. Then I remembered the Yearling. Have you read that one? Well, spoiler alert, it doesn’t end well.

I went inside and showed my pictures to the kids, still groggy from sleep. Dion wanted to go find the fawn, too. But no, we would let it rest now.

The next morning, all was quiet – which was either good news or bad for the fawn. I had to pack for a week-long trip, but increasingly haunted by the thought of an abandoned newborn just outside, I went for another walk.

I was hoping to hear or see something, anything: one more reassuring bugle blast, the white tail of a doe leaping away. I did see some scat that looked the right size to be doe and fawn, and heard a few crunching twigs, but nothing definitive. Back and forth I traipsed, scaring up songbirds and accusatory chipmunks.

The fawn’s fate was out of my hands now. Don’t be silly, I told myself. It always was.