I was crying last night when I was outside feeding the deer. We are just a few weeks away from finally being able to release them. I was NOT crying because I was sad about releasing them. I was looking around and thinking of the stories that go with them. There are too many stories to tell here, but I saw little Danny, who was found by some kind people who loved him SO much that they gave him up to make sure he would have the best possible chance to survive in the wild. The family fell in love with him when they found him and it took a few days for them to find us. They cried when they turned him over to us. And now, because of their selflessness, he is all grown up and ready for release, the way he should be. I saw Nova, who came to us with capture myopathy. She was precious and her finders never though of keeping her for a second because they knew she needed care they could not provide. Shes my poster child for this year on how things should go. They dropped everything to get her to us IMMEDIATELY, which means we got the right medication in her in a time frame that allowed it to work. She can now run and jump as well as all the others. She runs with the wild kids..... Thats the group that will most certainly do well out in the wild. I have no worries for any of the ones in that group. Tears actually started falling when I looked at Wire. He came to us after being found hanging in a barbed wire fence overnight. The people cut him out of the fence and brought him in right away. But his leg looked dislocated and it was torn to shreds from the barbs. I was sure we would have to euthanize him but it was Friday night so I gave him pain killers and antibiotics (just in case). I wrapped his wounds and padded his area to prop him up so he could sleep until we could get him to a vet. But the next day, he moved his bad leg. By Monday, I could see that it was NOT dislocated. He healed and went outside. But thats not the end of Wires story. After a few weeks outside, his bad leg swelled up to three times its size. So I brought him back inside and put him on another round of antibiotics. But his leg wouldnt heal. In fact, it got so bad that one of his hooves fell off! But after that (and about 3 weeks of antibiotics in strong doses), the swelling started to go down. He was getting wilder and wilder inside and it was getting to the point where keeping him in was causing more problems than putting him back out. I prayed that angels would watch over him and I put him back outside, hoping for the best. So when I looked at this HUGE healthy buck racing around the pen so fast that he was kicking up clods of mud, I remembered all the work that went into this beautiful boy and the times I worried that we would lose him. And the tears just kept coming because Im so very happy for him. Hes getting his life back....the one he was born to have before he got caught in a fence that humans put in his way. On release day, I will cry a lot more because I will also cry for the ones that did not make it. We had a HORRIBLE year with dog attacks this past year. Ive never seen so many. We had one week where 10 fawns came in. Eight died that same week (mostly the new ones) and 5 of those were due to dog attacks. (The other 3 that week had been hit by cars.) Dog attacks and hit by cars were the top 2 reasons for fawns dying this year. Number 3 was death due to emaciation from diarrhea when people tried to keep the fawns themselves until things got so bad that they gave them to us. Unfortunately, by then, we didnt have enough time to turn things around and many died in less than 24 hours of arriving here. I dont want to end this on a sad note. So lets all focus on the 30 babies that will be released in a few weeks. Every one of them has a story that started out sad. But on release day, there will be nothing but happiness in their lives. Morrow will also be released that day too. Shes our yearling that came back to us this past spring after she broke her leg out in the wild. She never liked me before, but when she had a huge problem, she knew where to come. Shes been with the babies all summer and will lead this group of babies out to the woods and beyond. Her leg has fully healed. It took most of the summer, but shes good to go now! She has done a fabulous job retraining some of the babies that were held too long by their finders. In the past, it was hard to overcome that problem. But she literally whipped them into shape. I felt SO sorry for poor Spring who had it all wrong. Morrow chased her and struck her with her front feet until Spring got into line. If Morrow had not done that, fawns would have died. Spring was giving false alarms and the others were starting to ignore the alarms. Now Spring is totally integrated into the group. Sorry this is so long. I could go on and on telling the stories of the babies from this year. But I will stop. Release day is coming soon and Ill just get my box of Kleenex ready. It will be a happy, happy day!
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 12:26:00 +0000
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