old country house blog

QUESTION: I FOUND A BABY DEER?

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RUPERT – Photo by Jeff Moore.

Once….I FOUND A BABY DEER. NO,  NOT the deer above, the baby deer above is a deer named “Rupert” that was delivered via c section, 3 weeks early, after his Mother was hit by a car.

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This photo is so you can see how TINY the deer was that I saw.

No...This is how I came to see a baby deer:

I was driving down the street, and saw, what I thought was a cat come out of the tall grass near the side of the road. Except, as I got closer…what I saw was standing right at he edge of the road, was the tiniest baby deer I had ever seen..like the size of a toy stuffed deer…he was so very tiny and wobbly…I immediately stopped. And all kinds of things ran through my head…

“Where is his Momma?”

“Is she the deer I saw get hit the other night?”

“Are we going to have a baby deer for a pet?”

“What should I name him?”

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My “Fantasy” Pet…I could name him…”Bambi?” from: Thingsmakemehappy.tumblr.com

Slowly…..I stepped out of the car, and he just stood there…like a deer NOT in the headlights…just stunned and probably too tiny to even know what to do…slowly..very slowly…like still photographs connected into one movement..he began to turn away…and then he stumbled back  into the tall grass. and disappeared….Instinct told me to leave him alone….and so that is exactly what I did.

Fast forward to Later that same day, when the kids got home from school, I said “GUESS what I saw…11″ and then….”Lets go see if MY baby deer is still there!!!”

But first…Phoebe did some googling, to find out how we should proceed and what we learned was fascinating…and stopped us in our tracks…

Baby deer are born in the late Spring, when the weather is milder. When they are born, they have NO scent. NONE. This lack of a SCENT is highly protective from predators….because ALL of their predators have poor vision and see only in black and white and rely on scent to find their prey. The Mommy deer DO have a scent ….they have the babies and then leave them, and ONLY come back to feed them and even consume their waste, as it has nutritive components for the new Mother. The babies mostly sleep and grow. This goes on for weeks, until the babies grow strong enough to keep up and run away from their prey.

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SO IF YOU see a baby deer, ABSOLUTELY DO NOT TOUCH IT! Not unless you know for certain the mother is not coming back. YOUR scent will alert predators and be a death sentence for the deer.

One article said if you see a baby, leave it, and come back to the spot the next day..if you come back and the baby is crying, then probably the mother is not coming back and you can take the baby to the proper wildlife refuge…otherwise…let nature do her thing…

I was sad to find out that Rupert,  the tiny deer above, did not survive…he was just too tiny. But a few weeks after I spotted my baby deer, I saw my him with his Momma, hanging out in the tall grass, playing with the lightening bugs in the warm summer evening air…

Hmmm.learn something new everyday!!!

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