Saturday, July 21, 2012

Hanging in There

The spotted fawn appears to have grown since it first appeared in these pages four days ago. Now it is tall enough to drink more comfortably from the bird bath.


This means that it is receiving nourishment from its mother, who also sometimes comes to drink along with another, younger doe. The trio also drink from our neighbor's bird bath.

They've never taken a drink from the large pot of water, although the fawn was tempted a couple of days ago. It approached the water pot several times, but jumped back in alarm when it got close enough to see its own reflection in the water. That's fine; we refill the bird bath several times each day for the deer and for the hordes of birds who come to bathe and drink.

Obviously our drought continues unabated, along with daily temperatures over 100ยบ. As the photo shows, not all of the grass is dormant. Grass that is protected by the shade of trees still has some green showing. We don't water the grass, only recently-planted trees, the tomatoes and sweet potatoes, two clematis and the bed of hostas.

We don't hope for much good to come of this summer, but I'm hoping that this fawn will hang in there and live to maturity.

2 comments:

Jayhawk Fan said...

I'm beginning to wonder if life is mostly about suffering only to die in misery....I'm looking to this fawn to show me up!

Shirley said...

He or she did, Nancy. The fawn and its older sister stayed together and are doing well. Unfortunately, Annie ran them off the other day and we haven't seen them since.