Yesterday I posted about our resident deer and fawn. Yesterday afternoon our friends visited us in our garden, and while we were sitting there, we could hear the little one call out for mummy and sure she showed up:
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Only that this time the little one wasn’t hidden in our garden, which is open to the woods, but in our neighbour’s which is partly open to ours, but closed to the woods. I’ve written about this problem for our deerest friends before: They run to the back where there’s a fence. Despite all of us leaving the garden so that mummy could come and get her baby, she did not dare to come closer towards our house where the opening to the neighbour’s garden is and the fawn stood at the fence in the back crying its heart out, so Mr and I decided to start a rescue operation.
We went to the neighbour’s backyard (yay for good neighbours and the permission to trespass) and opened the door in the back so the little one could leave.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
At first it was still standing, crying its heart out, while we could hear mummy rustle in the ferns behind the fence. As we came closer it did what fawns instinctively do: it lay down and kept very, very still, trusting its camouflage:
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Find the fawn. If we hadn’t known it was there we would have walked right past it. As it was we had to go within a metre of the poor thing, probably scaring it half to death, but it was lying right beside the door. Of course we didn’t get any closer than we had to and didn’t touch it, the pics are all taken with my big lens and Mr was very careful not to disturb it.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
As soon as we retreated the cutie staggered out of the door and I went back to close it again. Our neighbour is very firm with closing those doors because there’s also wild boars around. I could see it lying in the ferns and I heard mummy a few metres off. Since there was no more crying I suppose they left together soon afterwards.
That is one extremely cute baby. Poor thing, must have been scared to its core.
I was woken up today at 4 a.m. by some rustling outside my window, probably a squirrel took to climbing our walls again. When I went to check, I saw through the window a deer standing in front of our house, curiously looking into the garden through the gate. Wildlife can come quite close to the town at night, during day it is less common..
Ah, the poor thing, thank you for rescuing the fawn. Funny how people don’t realize that animals see fences differently than we do. I’m glad the fawn got out the gate; humans normally put gates in really weird places (from an animal’s perspective) so that animals have a harder time finding it. Good work on saving the day!
It must be a deer year -- we live on the edge of town, but the area is inhabited enough that deer aren’t ordinarily seen hanging about the neighbourhood. Until last Friday, when Husband nearly gave me a heart attack by nearly having a heart attack himself, because there was a deer standing right by our back gate, looking in. Of course, it took off rather quickly as soon as Ronja got her voice back, too.
Haven’t seen any babbies yet, though -- I’m so glad the pair were reunited, the crying must have been quite heartbreaking!