August 02, 2001 - A young fawn's good fortuneThe Suffolk Times • August 2, 2001
A young fawn's good fortune
Times /Review photos by Barbara Stoutenburgh
Left: A newborn fawn after its rescue by a wildlife rehabilitator. Right: The fawn lies motionless in the woods. Nature has provided young fawns with a spotted
coat that blends in with the surroundings. They are also odorless, which makes It difficult for any predator to detect them.
I'D LIKE To,sHARE wrrH YOU some
of the comments from my readers over
the past week; some came by tele-
phone, others from letters. The first
one has to do with a baby deer, a fawn
I got an excited
telephone call Focus
from a couple
who had seen a ON
fawn and her hIATURE
motller in their
woods and want- by Paul
ed to share their Stoutenburo
find with me.
Of all the years I've tramped the
woods of Long Island, I've never had
the good fortune to come across a
newborn deer. So, with a call to a
wildlife rehabilitator to meet us at the
site and Barbara ready with her cam-
era, we were soon off.
Sure enough, when we got there we
met with the rehabilitator and were
led by the couple to the woods where
the young fawn lay motionless. The
nose didn't twitch, the eyes didn't blint
nor did the ears move. In its spotted
coat, which blended in with its sur-
roundings, the fawn was well hidden ir
the undergrowth. This is nature's way
of making sure the young have a
chance to survive. There is no odor to
the fawn, and with its camouflaged
coat, predators can walk within feet of
this little creature and not know it is
there.
The reason the cou le knew the
fawn was there is that the evening
before, during a terrific thunder and
lightning storm, they had seen the
mother and fawn together. The doe
evidently got spooked by the noise of
the storm and took off up over a berm
leaving the young fawn behind. It set-
tled down right where it was when the
mother left. The next morning the
couple went to check and see if the
mother had come back for the fawn.
But no, she hadn't.. The fawn was
exactly where it had been the evening
before; it hadn't moved.
The rehabilitator checked the little
creature out and even though it
seemed fairly strong, it was obvious it
had spent the night in the rain and had
not eaten and therefore the best thing
to do was get it some nourishment
right away. She wrapped it up in,a
warm blanket and took it back to the
rehab center in Southold, where it was
fed and cared for.
Normally we don't interfere with
newborn deer, baby rabbits, birds, etc.,
for nine times out of 10 the mother
will come back when no one is around
and rescue her young. Most often we
do more harm than good when we try
to act as mother by trying to feed and
take care of young found wildlife.
In this case it was decided because
of its condition that the fawn needed
to be taken care of for a longer time
and so it was taken to another licensed
rehabilitator who specializes in deer
over on Shelter Island, where it will be
cared for with another fawn the same
age. When strong enough, they will be
turned back to the wild.
This story came to me by way of a
letter from an old friend. We don't
have any chipmunks out on the East
End yet, but if you're in the Riverhead
or Calverton area with the pine bar-
rens in your back yard, you are bound
to see chipmunks. They should also be
along the Sound bluffs
and in some of the more
remote areas. The prob-
lem is their habitat is
continually being taken
over by "progress," plus
the fact that feral cats
are deadly predators and know It
are the chipmunk's No.1
enemy.
Out here on the North Fork there
just aren't any or maybe I've just never
found them or heard about there. That
is, until yesterday, when I received a
note from my old friend, who stated
that he had seen chipmunks in
Cutchogue for the first time. That's
good to hear. They are the cutest of all
our rodents and it's great to have them
running around your back yard or liv-
ing in your garage.
I have to relate a tale that I have
probably told some of you before.
Years ago I wanted to bring chip-
munks back and see if we couldn't get
them started again in our area. I con-
tacted Carl Helms, who at that time
ran the Quogue Wildlife Refuge. He
told me that people in some areas
have so many chipmunks they want to
get rid of them, so they trap them live
in Havahart traps and then take them
to the refuge to be taken care of.
Needless to say, they had an abun-
dance of them. I asked if he would
share some of his chipmunks with me
and he said he would be. glad to. With
that in mind he put eight
or 10 of them in a trap
with an up- and -down
sliding door, put them in
the back of his pickup
and drove over from
Quogue to Cutchogue.
there. The problem was that
each time the sliding
door bounced up on the
way over, a chipmunk would let itself
out. So we had chipmunks scattered
here and there between Quogue and
Cutchogue. He did arrive with two still
in the trap and we let those out in
back of the garage, where they lived
for two years and then disappeared. I
could only attribute it to feral cats that
roam the countryside. What a shame.
We had a cat years ago but we kept
it exclusively in the house and that's
the way it should be. Cats are great
company and make wonderful pets
but to let them roam is absolutely
wrong. Don't tell me that cats don't
kill birds and little rabbits because I
get calls all the time from people
whose cat has just brought in a baby
bird or little rabbit and they want to
know how to care for it.
So that's my story about chipmunks.
I was glad to hear we have them as far
east as Cutchogue. If the population of
feral cats diminishes, maybe someday
we'll have chipmunks around again,
roaming the North Fork. Those in
Riverhead should be glad that they
still have the pine barrens to the south
and the great bluffs of the Sound and
other undeveloped areas where
wildlife still abounds.
Predators can
walk within feet
of this little
creature and not