I was walking around our gardens yesterday morning, when Mr. EndlessSeeker came to our back gate and summoned me to “come quick”. I did and discovered he had found a pair of very young whitetail deer fawns wandering around the woods down by our creek, all alone. We stood and watched, mesmerized by this gift. The two fawns were tiny – only a few inches taller than our house cats – gangly and unstable in their gaits, skinny enough to see their ribs and hip bones, and spotted and striped to blend in with the leaves of the forest floor. Mom was nowhere in sight.

As we watched, one of the fawns saw me move and walked right toward me, calling a couple of tiny mews, as if asking, “Are you my mother?”.

Both fawns then curled up into tight little balls on the forest floor, about 30 feet apart, and remained still. We figured their mom had dropped them off here and gone to feed. But we did worry a bit, since they seemed to be wandering around the woods, instead of just laying in one spot. After all, we do have coyotes around the homestead each night. But, we knew nature would take its course, and we left them to their rest for the afternoon, setting up the trail camera near them to see what activity we might capture.

Later last night and again this morning, the two fawns were nowhere to be seen, but the trail camera had captured some other fun surprises.

A first for our property….a wild turkey!

Then, during a rainstorm, one of the fawns wandered down the hill toward the creek…

We were especially relieved to see a lactating doe on the camera during the night and figure this might be Momma to the twin fawns.

And, then there are the always fun antics of deer mice…

And a pair of raccoons that we’ve captured on the camera for a couple of nights now…

We’ll be watching for the fawns and doe to return over the coming weeks. For now, we trust nature to do what it does best…carry on.

Enjoy your day. I hope you will go out and find some critters in your own woods.