The other night, while Anne and I were watching a movie, she whispered, “There’s a deer in the yard.” But there wasn’t just one deer. There were four: a doe and three fawns. I grabbed my camera and took pictures of them without the flash, so the photo is a bit blurry, but I didn’t want to scare them away. All the movement frightened them anyway, and one, two, three, four, the doe and her fawns slipped through an opening in the hedge and disappeared.
Either the doe was a siren last spring or she’s babysitting for the neighbors because the fawns were stair steps in height. They were beautiful and graceful and still sported spots. Hiram and I saw them again, hiding in the neighbor’s spruce trees just west of our driveway, when we walked Thursday morning.
The last time we saw a fawn in the yard was the morning after we moved into this house, back in May of 1991. Mom and Allen camped in the living room and saw a doe and fawn outside the east window when they woke up.
Certainly other does and fawns have meandered across our lawn in the intervening years. Since we saw the triplets I’ve been wondering how many deer families I missed because I forgot to look outside. How many times has busyness blinded me to beauty? For the last few days, as I work around the house, I’ve been reminding myself to look outside.
I haven’t seen anything yet, but someday I will.
