Week 6: Change of Heart

Hello everyone!

This week, four new fawns were born to two does. The first doe, Patty, had a buck and a doe. We took the doe to hand raise her, and the buck, sadly died a few days after birth. The second doe, O5 (she is just a tag number as she doesn't have a name), also had a buck and a doe just this morning! Still a little wet when I found them. We will most likely end up hand raising her doe fawn as well, as O4 is not very tame.

The point of having tame deer, it to make everything easier on the owner. Tame deer will walk right up to you, and that makes it easier to check them out, make sure that there aren't any signs of illness, and if necessary, to treat them. Treating a sick but tame deer is easier then treating a sick deer that isn't tame. It also makes dealing with their fawns a lot easier as well too. A tame mother will have tame offspring. But the deer can lose their tameness, if they don't have continual contact with humans.

Over the past few weeks, I have learned quite a bit. Not just about deer, and raising their fawns, but also about myself. When first going into this internship, I was a little skeptical about raising and treating whitetail deer as farm animals. This skepticism has turned into a bit of a moral dilemma. I want to perform well here at Fawn Country, but at the same time I think its wrong to keep deer penned up like farm animal. This dilemma is making it difficult to do my best here, and so I've decided to cut my internship short. I was originally going to stay until mid August. But now, I'm going to stay until next Friday. I'll be home June 26th.

I simply am not a good match for this position, and I can admit that. Its not that I don't like deer or working with animals. Its just that I'm not passionate about this internship, and its hindering me, and it will also hinder the program here as well. And it breaks my heart to see such a beautiful wild animal locked up in a pen.

I will post one last time before I head back to Massachusetts for the rest of the summer. Hopefully with some pictures.

~peace