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Peter Hensel
Blessed, Blessed, Blessed: To Live With Marin's Wildlife - Part II
Galaxy The Fawn’s Epic Journey -
In next morning’s light, I found the birthing place in the tall grass, deserted.
I thought: “Well, obviously the big injured doe, Momma Girl, was strong enough to rise to standing and move herself and her fawns to a safer, more hidden place.”
The thick bamboo hedge in front of the back fence was the likely candidate as to where they could be hiding. There is a three foot gap between the fifty foot- long bamboo planting and the redwood fence---fully enough space for an adult doe to enter and then lay down, keeping her fawns close and safe beside her. Plus, for a mother deer, the space is defensible---in theory. Potential predators would be forced to enter at one end of a narrow passageway and face a flurry of foreleg hoof kicks, delivered with lightning snap force. Provided, of course, our injured deer was strong enough to stand quickly and react.
But my All’s Well Assumption was quickly cast in doubt by a phone call from a neighbor who lives in a second floor apartment above the fence.
Julia said, “Last night, around 2 am there was the most godawful wild animal battle you’ve ever heard, going on between the bamboo and the fence. Snarls and growls and snorts like you cannot imagine. It went on for about five minutes . Then all went quiet.”
That was sickening.
I was afraid to go and look.
There might be carnage.
Perhaps the injured mother deer had not been able to defend her fawns after all. Maybe one or both had been carried off.
Raccoons were the likely culprit. I knew there was a local gang of them that make the neighborhood rounds every night, inspecting garbage cans for unsecured lids, etc., etc. A big fully grown raccoon can weigh thirty pounds or more.
After exiting the street corner sewer grates, the raccoons first hit Town Park, patrolling around picnic tables, looking in the bushes for scraps---especially bones with traces of meat still clinging. Then they wander up the alley alongside the Post Office, climbing fences at will and entering the neighborhoods. Raccoons’ claws make them excellent climbers. With very sharp teeth, raccoons also are quite omnivorous.
I could almost set my clock back in May 2015 by their appearance every night at 10 pm, scaling the fence at the southwest corner and then dropping down into our property. Usually it was three raccoons, two adults and a juvenile. Sometimes more---a gang of up to five.
Now I thought: “After a night time battle like my neighbor described, the newborn fawn babes might very well be toast. But how about Momma Girl, the wounded guardian? “
Sometimes deer, filled with adrenaline, will kick so hard at predators that they end up shattering a foreleg.
I n any event, I did not want to go and look behind the bamboo because if Momma Girl was still laying there injured, maybe even more than before, my appearance would startle her and force her to try to struggle to her feet.
Call me a lily-livered. So be it.
But I quelled the urge to investigate, turning my attention to daily chores, ate a late lunch and then took an afternoon nap.
Have you ever noticed that a good nap sometimes will solve all problems? They do for me anyway---
It was about four o’clock that I went out on my second floor back deck and looked out over the back yard to see what I could see.
I saw Momma Girl, our injured doe mother, standing upright and stock still beneath the overhanging boughs of the redwood tree in the far southeast corner of our lot, near the fence. She was alone. Her posture was quite rigid, immobile. But she was standing up very straight. I called out to her to see if could get her to look in my direction. Or maybe perk up her big ears. But she ignored me.
I thought: “She looks like she’s in a state of shock. Something terrible must have happened. ”
But as I stood there, leaning on the deck rail, some movement caught my eye at the edge of the bamboo hedge. A small dark spotted form had squeezed through a small opening at the bottom of the bamboo plantings. The fawn’s dense furry coat was quite dark. Much darker than you usually see in pictures. But this was a newborn, just one day old. Not much larger than a fully grown house cat.
The dark brown coloration made the fawn’s spots even more pronounced. Even at a distance, the swirls and clusters, yellow beige in color, reminded me somehow of Van Gogh’s famous painting called “A Starry Night”.
I watched as the lone fawn, still a bit unsteady on his legs, picked his way up the slight slope and into the wild tall grass. Somehow he wriggled, laying down in just the right way, so that he managed to draw the long grass over the top of him like a blanket.
If I hadn‘t seen his maneuver myself, I wouldn’t even have known he was there. Laying curled up and flat to the ground, he was almost completely hidden.
But an observant crow perched on the branch of a cherry plum tree just thirty feet away, had seen the same thing that I had.
Crows also are scavengers. And they forage in small hunting groups. I’ve seen them bring back a dead rat to my bird bath, immerse it in water and peck away on the poor thing until they’ve paired all the meat from the bones.
Now the sentry crow issued an alert call, a loud caw, answered by several other crow voices in yards adjacent to mine.
Then the lone sentry crow glided from cherry plum tree branch to the ground and began hopping though the grass to the spot where the fawn, whom I’ll call Galaxy, had concealed himself.