Wild Wild Life

A Talking Heads song lifted from one of the best animation films in the last 20 years, "Open Season."

This weekend was quite strange. As I begin the drive home for a relaxing weekend with the family, I get a call from Gabriel telling me that there is a deer close to the road by our house. As I pull up to the front of the neighborhood, I see this small deer that looks confused and disoriented and without a mother. After a few minutes, I was able to corral her and bring her home. The intention was to contact Tennessee Wildlife to have them intervene. I had not planned for the events to come.

She looked as if she had the eyes of an old toy poodle- a thick bluish-white haze covering each iris. A lady working the animal rehab center said the deer was blind or so young, her vision had not come into focus. It looked like cataracts After finally getting in touch with TWRA, I was advised to attempt to introduce fluids with a baby bottle and wake up at 4am to place her in the area we found her in order to allow the mother to acquire her and move her to a more private location. After about 8am, see if she is still in the same place where I left her. I did as TWRA advised and woke up before dawn to place her in a den area. When I went to see if she had been moved, I found her in the exact location I left her: mother never showed. I picked her back up and my objective turned to delivering the fawn for rehabilitation.

The woman at TWRA called and advised me that she had an emergency in her family and she was unable to receive the deer. She gave me a few pointers for feeding her while I waited to deliver her to a rehabilitation center. It was up to me to provide the nourishment needed to sustain her life. We went to the Co-Op to buy some animal milk and a goat's nipple to feed her. I spent all weekend taking care of her.

Over the weekend, we noticed that when I set her down in the grass, she would follow me around no matter where I went in the back yard. I was being recognized as her mother! As Tuesday came, we were set to deliver her to the rehabilitation. Slowly, there was less following me and more running from me. I had to catch her several times in the back yard when I set her down to stretch in the grass.

We finally delivered the fawn to the rehabilitation center and she commented that the cataracts was due to malnutrition. She must have not eaten anything in days before we found her and we had done the right thing to intervene. This evens the score with killing the deer that jumped in from of my car while in Virginia Beach several years ago.