The call came just before school pickup time: a special patient had just arrived at the vet’s. Half an hour later the boys crane their necks as my friend Lucy opens a cage and scoops out the occupant: a roe fawn, mere days old.
“He was incredibly weak but we administered fluids and glucose and he can stand up now. He still weighs less than my pet rabbit, though.” Spindly legs dangle from her hand like kindling sticks. The fur on his back is brindled, surprisingly coarse, and marked with lines of almost-joined spots that seem to have been dry-brushed on.
The fawn was found by a delivery driver and left at his next drop. “But we don’t know exactly where he was picked up, so it’ll be difficult to take him back. Extreme dehydration suggests Mum hadn’t fed him for a long while, so maybe something really has happened to her.” She’s right to wonder. Many fawns are “rescued” unnecessarily while they wait for does to return from their own urgent feeding.
He doesn’t seem frightened, but he objects to being held, and when Lucy sets him on the grass he curls like a pretzel between her knees and buries his face. At rest his folded forefeet look much more like the fingers they actually are, and the hooves are tortoiseshell-like, slightly translucent.
Karolina, the vet nurse, brings a feed of lamb formula. The bottle looks absurdly large and the teat has pore tape over it to reduce the flow. Even so, it’s a miserable struggle. She has to prise his mouth open – it’s scarcely big enough to take her finger at full gape. I glimpse the tiny serrations of baby teeth.
He gives the first of a series of piercing, plaintive yelp-bleats. Lucy catches my eye. “I almost can’t bear it.” I know what she means. It’s a sound of pure need and it yanks on every maternal and compassionate instinct.
An hour later Lucy messages me. The fawn has managed some milk from a syringe and been driven to a sanctuary in Whitby. He should be released in the autumn. His mother may be alive, she may be dead. Either way, they won’t see each other again.
