The Baby Fawn

Yesterday around lunchtime a doe came wandering slowly past our house, right behind our back fence. Two of my sons and I went out onto the back porch to watch her amble by. Then we saw why she was walking so slowly: she was being followed by a fawn so young it could barely walk. They proceeded across the street. When a car approach the fawn tried to pick up its pace but it obviously could not move any faster than its stumbling walk. The little thing can't have been more than a few days old, and I wonder if this wasn't its first real journey. We were so entranced that nobody thought to take a photograph until he was across the street and its mother had already disappearied into some bushes. But trust me, this thing was tiny.

I consider this more evidence for my theory that our deer don't have their babies in the woods, where there are dangers like off-leash dogs and occasional coyotes. They have them out in the neighborhood, where dogs are safely leashed or fenced and the soft suburban people would never think to molest a lovely little fawn.