Baby Deer

I was on my first week of summer vacation with the kids when my wife called me.
"There's a fawn in the yard."
"Cool"
"No, it's all by itself."
"It's mother will show up, give it time."
The next morning I get another call.
"It's still there."
"Ok, well, I still think it's mother will show up."
"What if she doesn't?"
"Uhhh.... what do you mean?"
"What do I do if she doesn't?"
"It's a fawn, there's not much you can do. It's not like you can invite it in for a meal."
"Yea, I guess so"
The next afternoon, the calls continue......
"The fawn is still here, it's walking around by the guineas."
"Ok, maybe it's mom won't show up. No mother would let her child associate with guineas."
"I told you"
"Yes you did."
"Now what do I do."
"Nothing, there's nothing you can do. It can drink from the guinea waterer and if you don't mow the lawn it will have plenty to eat. The rest is up to the deer."
"Should I buy it food?"
"If it will make you feel better, but it probably won't eat it."
"Does it still need milk?"
"Probably not or it would already be dead."
"What!"
That's how we ended up with Baby Deer living in our yard. He wasn't really a pet, he was just an animal that happened to live in our yard for a while. We never did find out how he ended up there. We suspect that he was born there and though his mother could easily hop the neighborhood fences, he was too little. They would have hidden in back and since we didn't have a dog at the time and we don't really ever go out to the back 1/3 acre of our property (which is quite jungley) we would never have seen them. As he got older his mother would have started to leave him occasionally to go do something else, go eat somewhere else, go talk to other deer, whatever it is that deer do. Whether she was chased away by loose dogs or hit by a car or just got lost, we'll never know, but she disappeared. With his mother gone he started to wander about. Deer are really quite social and I'm sure he was lonely. He latched on to the guineas as his herd. He'd follow them around as they looked for bugs and he'd lay down near them during the day. At night he headed out back when they went to roost in the trees. It wasn't long before he was even eating guinea food out of their food bowl in the coop. He'd come too when I whistled for the birds.
He was always just a bit wary of people. We could get pretty close to him but never really tried to tame him. We might have been able to with patience but it seemed like a bad idea to me. A basic fear of humans would be useful to him if he ever jumped the fence and headed off on his own. When we found our dog Patty that fall and brought her home we were worried about how they'd get along. They did have a few interactions that worried us, but the stern talks that we gave Patty and the fact that neither of them had a friend seemed to sort it out. They didn't exactly become cuddly, but they would play with each other in the yard. Some observing out the window showed that Baby Deer was the one instigating the playing as often as not. He really did need more friendship than that stupid flock of birds could supply.
As fall drew on he grew bigger and grew out of his spots. He also grew a cute little set of buttons on his head confirming that he was in fact a he. This made me feel pretty good about not trying to tame him. There was no way he would stay around any longer than next fall, he'd be too interested in girls by then and he'd be off. He wasn't a pet, and I knew that, but I did check on him every morning. Every now and again he'd manage to get over the fence into the neighbor's yard. I'd open the gate and sort of herd him back in. I knew he wasn't ours but I still felt like we could provide the safest place until he was ready to leave. One day in January, he just wasn't there anymore. We looked for him. We really hoped he'd come back, mostly so we knew he was safe, but he didn't. Lots of things could have happened to him, most of them bad, but I like to think that he finally saw another deer in the vacant lot of woods behind us. He found a friend, not a make do friend like the dog or the guineas, but a real deer friend. When that happened he was ready to leave. We'd kept him safe as long as he needed that and now he went off into the world to be a real deer. I was happy for him, but it was still hard not to be sad about it.
Baby Deer was never a pet in the strictest sense, he just happened to live the same place that we did for a while. He was still a very interesting part of our lives and of our children's childhood.