On February 18th I blogged about poking one of my goats, because I thought it was sick. Today I am going to tell another story of me touching an animal to check it.
This is something that happened in May of 1993. At the time my herd of Angora goats numbered about 15. They spent their days in the barnyard when I was at work. After I biked home from work, I used to take them out to the pasture where there was more grass for them to eat. I would herd them down there, then hang around to keep them out of mischief. As they grazed, I didn’t really have anything to do, but it was a relaxing way to clear my mind after a hard day at work.
One day I herded the goats over to a patch of tall grass over by the fence. As I stood there, I happened to glance down and noticed something brown with some white, below the tall grass. At first I thought that it was a big grouse, (a chicken-like bird) hiding under the grass, but then I parted the grass and discovered it was a newly born fawn.
It lay still, completely inert, and I wondered if it was dead, so I touched it to see if it was alive. Its skin twitched, so I knew it was okay. I went to get my wife, so she could see it. The mother deer then appeared in the pasture, and slowly walked across it. I think it was trying to distract our attention away from the fawn.
I didn’t want to cause the mother deer any grief, so herded the goats back up to the barn, and left the fawn hiding in the tall grass. We kept watch from the house, and the mother eventually went back to the fawn, and led it away.
What a treat.
View my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
No comments:
Post a Comment