Sula is a white tailed doe that has given birth on my property 4 out of the 5 years ive lived here. Her favorite birthing spot is here in the location of the photograph under a cedar tree but the last time she did give birth under a cedar in the orchard. Every year she is pregnant she returns to the property and leaves a fawn under a cedar tree when she gets up and goes. I never have caught the birth in action. She’s very quiet about it. All of a sudden there’s just a fawn in the grass one day. Her last fawn was pretty impulsive and it liked to do things like run in the street and stand there whenever she tucked it away in the grass. It made it to adulthood but never grew out of the unrecommendable behavior nor did it develop a fear of predators, humans, or cars. One day i heard a sickening thud as a car screeched to a hault in front of my property. I had seen two white tails through the grass and i assumed it was sula and her youngest adult child arriving to bed down for the night. Both of them fled the scene before the driver surveyed his car and then the woods. I spent a long time looking for them because i wasnt sure whether it was sula or her offspring that had been hit. Neither of them turned up for a long while and then one day i saw Sula. I never saw her latest fawn again. I assume she died as she was a daily visitor before the automobile incident. It seemed to rattle Sula and she was very standoffish. She gradually went back to coming every night to eat discarded chicken feed that the chickens had picked through and kicked out of the pen and sleep near the house to hide from coyotes.
I was glad it had not been Sula that was hit but i was sad for her that she had lost her youngest child. She was such a seasoned and attentive mother. That deer was just built different. Something had gone haywire in her brain before birth and she had no survival instinct whatsoever. She was sweet though and had really taken a liking to spending time with the dogs through the fence. I hoped that Sula would have another fawn the following year and it would not be run over by a car and she could keep it.
I was watering the plants tonight when i saw Sula just standing in the yucca field across the street looking at me. She did not move. She just stood staring at me. It was unusual for her to take so long to cross the street and come over to graze and bed down. I walked to the fence and said hi, staring back at her. She cocked her head so i cocked mine. She moved her ear so i tilted my head in the direction she had moved it. She shook her head. I shook mine. She then disappeared into the yucca and i went back to my evening chores. The next thing i knew Sula was on my property walking out of the trees staring right at me. She seemed to be making an awful lot of eye contact. She’d never done that before. I noticed a small brown thing walking ahead of her in the grass. It was a baby! Sula had been pregnant and had a spring fawn. She paraded the infant out in clear view of me and nursed it while i stood watching. She had never done this before. Sula is not a pet deer. She is feral. She usually hides her babies from me in the grass. It was remarkably similar to watching a goat or a horse nurse. She sort of bent her front legs slightly in order to lean down so that the baby could reach her to nurse. The baby put its head about where a goat kid would have. I was dumbfounded. She nursed the baby for a long while (several minutes) in plain view of me while i took pictures and observed. I promised her i would leash the dogs for a few months, until the baby got big enough to fend for itself a bit, to make sure they didnt chase her baby or stress it. As i put the dogs in the house via the leash Sula was tucking the little one into the grass under my north east trees in her favorite spot for the night. I am unsure if it is a boy or a girl but i decided to name it Oashni meaning precious gift from God.
