White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

Fawn in front yard 8/13/2020

Update: We spotted the Fawn still hanging around the body on Sunday evening. I never heard from Arkansas Game & Fish.  Late Monday afternoon, I donned a respirator and covered the body with 50 pounds of lime and a good layer of straw. My vegetable garden has been invaded, with a loss of some tomato foliage and my pitiful Swiss Chard crop.  I've concluded that the Fawn is fending for himself. 8/23/2020.

Mom and the Fawn having been sharing the Place on Salem Road with us this summer.  They have been terribly civilized, in that they have pretty much left the vegetable garden alone.  A foray into the young okra happened early on, and cucumber vines and tomato plants along the perimeter have been sampled, but other than that, they have pretty much limited themselves to eating the day lily buds.  I've been busy spraying deer repellent (nasty smelling stuff made of rotten eggs and garlic), but I have no illusions that the repellent has been completely responsible for keeping the deer clear of the garden.  A hungry deer will eat anything.

It always feels like I'm walking a tightrope: I love seeing the deer.  They are beautiful, graceful creatures.  But they eat my crops.  When you pour your sweat and dreams into a garden, it's hard to see it eaten to the ground again and again.  This summer has been a blessing.

So it was with great sadness that we discovered the doe dead in the strip of woods along the front of our yard.  And even sadder to see the fawn lingering nearby. 

This happened last evening.  The grapevine has been at work, and I'm hoping for a call from Arkansas Game and Fish Commission biologists tomorrow to learn more about what happened.  It could have been an injury in the road, but I had spotted a growth on her throat one morning recently from quite a distance away.  Google suggested that it might be a cutaneous fibroma caused by a papilloma virus, but the pictures didn't look like what I saw.

One bright spot is that our neighbor Mike reports seeing The Fawn playing with other fawns earlier in the summer, so we have hope that he is socialized with the neighborhood deer and will become part of their group.  Life goes on.

 

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