fawn

This morning, I walked to my truck as usual to go to work. Because I mainly wear my glasses to drive, I store them in my truck. Just as I was opening my door, I looked 20 yards up the hill toward a fence corner at the edge of the woods and noticed what seemed to be a little head poking up, staring back at me. I thought "hmm, someone's dog is out roaming around." Just then, it lept out of the weeds and skipped right up to me (withing 15 feet). It was the cutest baby fawn you will ever encounter, and it didn't even seem scared of me. As I sat in my truck with the door open, I simply watched as it was walking around and listening to dogs barking. These dogs were several hundred yards away on the other side of the woods. I, too, listened and noticed that the dogs were not the only ones making a noise. Amongst the dog barks, one could distinctly make out the sound of a mother deer as she snorted and weezed.

Deer do this for three reasons. First, deer will snort if they smell something they do not like (dog, human, etc) or if they have been scared by a noise. Secondly, deer will snort if they THINK they saw something that looked suspicious. This is usually accompanied with a foot stomp to try to get that "something" to move and give itself away. Lastly, deer will snort as an alert to other deer in a way such as tracking. I think this mother doe was snorting and weezing for a combination of reasons. Sure she was scared of the dogs, but I could tell she was alerting the baby as to her location. Every so often the fawn would look in the direction of the mother's weezes and edge closer. Eventually I was becoming late for work and had to start my truck. This was a definite signal to the fawn to hide but at least I was able to take a few pictures with my camera phone. I hope to post a few of them later. This would have been an EXCELLENT time to try out my new canon xsi camera......DRAT!