On May 27, Emily and the kids witnessed a baby deer walk wobbly down into our yard.  The deer was all legs and was clearly very newly born.  The mother deer was nearby for awhile but we didn’t see where they went so assumed they left.  A little later, Abigail yelled, “I see a deer!”  I didn’t believe her at first but I followed her anyhow.  There, under a tree lay a baby deer all curled up.  The mother was no where to be found so we assumed she had abandoned her fawn.  We decided to wait it out a bit down on our patio.  Just a few minutes later, the fawn decided to come check us out.  It was so friendly that we couldn’t help but touch it.  I was concerned that we had ruined any chance of the mother accepting the baby again.  Still, we decided to wait it out, this time inside the house since the fawn curled up under our patio furniture.  Eventually (a long time later!), the mother came back through and picked up her fawn.  We hadn’t seen them in awhile but the other day, we saw them (or another family of deer?) in the yard.  This time, there were 2 fawns with the doe.  I was relieved to see that all was well!

The hard thing for me to believe is that there are so many deer in Charleston.  It was quite a thrill to see this all unfold.  We see deer several times a week eating apples at the neighbors’ apple trees or the new leaves on my raspberries.  I think we see more wild life here than we ever expected we would see in the city.  There are goods and bads about that but, I love that we get to see the deer so close!