The cool part of living in the woods...

We have mentioned in previous blog posts about the creatures living in our garage, but this time I wanted to point out the cool part about living in the woods.

Tonight I walked out to my shop about 10:15. It was pretty dark outside, since it has been raining all evening and there were still lots of low clouds. As I got to the shop, the motion detector light on the corner comes on. I opened the door to the shop and as I stepped in, I heard this very odd sound coming from the woods out past the shop. It was rather loud and didn't sound like anything I had heard before. I stepped back outside and walked down the driveway to the parking area beside our apartment. I had a flashlight with me, so I pointed it in the woods to see if I could tell what it was.

I could see some animal about 75 feet away, just inside the trees, jumping around. The noise kept coming every few seconds as the animal jumped around. I thought it that it might be a dog attacking something so I walked a little closer. I could see 2 sets of eyes, one set on the big animal and one set on the animal on the ground. Then I noticed this big white tail pointing upward. It was a deer! But what kind of animal was on the ground?

As I walked to the side, to get a better angle around some of the trees, I noticed a very little fawn trying to stand and walk. It was the fawn that was bleating every few seconds when the doe would jump around it. The doe was snorting and jumping around trying to get the fawn to run away from the danger of a person near by. I figured I was frightening them so I walked back to my shop.

Fawns are normally born at dusk and can walk within hours of being born, so this one probably was born earlier tonight. It was only about 12 inches tall and had very wobble legs.

We have seen other deer in the woods and yard, but this was the first fawn I had seen and being only a couple hours old at that. A fawn isn't something that you see when you live in a subdivision. Living in the woods is pretty cool.