Camera Critters Sunday..... A New Life

For Camera Critters Sunday I thought I'd bring you a picture of a White Tail Deer Fawn who was born in the flower bed just outside our sliding glass doors at our former lake house one Summer, as well as one of her mother, who was our White Tail friend.

Someday I will tell you my many stories from the 20+ years we owned the lake house, but for now I'd like to share this particular tale of the little fawn.

One Summer the kids & I were at the lake house for the duration of the hot months since the children were still small and didn't have dozens of activities to keep them at home yet. So, we'd usually pack up like The Beverly Hillbillys into the Suburban and head to the lake we called ours, in the Texas Hill Country. Since the children were still toddlers, we didn't yet let them bring friends. It was a huge place with 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, and an enormous great room with the kitchen in the center of it all. One entire side of the great room was plate glass windows, as well as half of another, like an L shape. There was one set of sliding glass doors at one end and another set of glass doors at the other end. Both entries had steps (or a stoop) leading down to the patio with flower beds lining the entire patio. We only ever used one of the entrances and the other was almost as if no one even knew that it was there. It was in the bed by this stoop that the doe decided to have her fawn.

We always had dozens of deer at the lake that came right up into the yard and we always kept lots of corn on hand for the kids and guests to feed them. They were also a great garbage disposal resource for things like watermelon rind, apple cores and the like. They were also handy to have around in case of snakes, because a White Tail deer will either kill the snake or tree them. We always had a plentiful supply of rattlesnakes, so I was comforted by the presence of the deer, spending a small fortune on deer corn in order to keep them there.

For around 4 or 5 years we had a semi-pet deer who knew us and came to see us every time we were there and the kids named her Mama Deer (yes, I know... not very original). We always knew which one she was because she had a clipped ear, as if it had been bitten off in a fight. But, she would come up to any of us and eat from our hands, which was a great source of glee for the kids. She was just precious and always so gentle around the babies. My children both still remember her vividly. This was back before Lyme's Disease and huge tick infestations and we had several great horned owls that lived on the property. They worked very hard at keeping pests and varmints trimmed back.

Anyway, fire ants had at last made their way into the Hill Country several years earlier so we were constantly battling them. Many times we would find newborn fawns already dead on the property, killed by fire ants. So, when this precious baby was born in the bed on the porch, we just knew it had to be Mama Deer's. She would have been the only one who trusted us enough to fawn by the porch. Sure enough, a couple of days later, we saw her with her fawn. I always thought she must have known that close to the house was a safe place away from the ants. The fawn never took to us the way Mama Deer did and soon just became another of the small herd on the property.

Then, one year we went to the lake and Mama Deer never came and we were all so sad (alright, I bawled like a baby because it just broke my heart), yet we were thankful that we'd had her stick around for so many years. We couldn't even tell which fawn was hers by that time, so it seemed almost as if we were closing the chapter to a book. I guess we were, really. The kids were growing up and life was moving on, but Mama Deer will live forever in our hearts.