A small herd of bright-eyed fawns are adapting to the world at South Plains Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.
LUBBOCK, TEXAS (AP) -- In the fall, they will roam free on private, West Texas ranchlands.
The eight fawns, some with unknown pasts, have a definite advantage — they are being cared for daily by center volunteer Barry Johnson. He brings them goat's milk, cantaloupe and grapes four times a day, and the little animals have come to regard him as a sort of foster parent, volunteers said.
And when the time comes for their independence, he plans to set out some of their favorite treats on weekends through the winter.
"It's whatever they liked the best while I had them at the center," he said.
Wildlife center founder Carol Lee suspects some of the fawns may have been brought to the center as a result of what she calls the "Bambi myth."
"People see a deer fawn along the road or out in the middle of a field, and erroneously believe they are orphaned," she said.
"People," Lee continued, "find a fawn folded up beside a road, and it appears there is no mother. Once it's in our hands, we don't have a choice but to go ahead and treat it like the rest of them."
Occasionally, a real Bambi comes the center's way.
"Sometimes we will have a believable, cut-and-dried story: They saw the mother had been hit by a car," Johnson said. "It's sad. Sometimes for several days they will see the fawn stay with the mother's body, until somebody gets the fawn and brings it to us."
He discovered one of those Monday morning in the center's drop-off building, then talked by phone to the person from Midland who had left it.
"They said the mother had been killed by a car, and it was with the mother. It's probably about nine pounds, and I'm guessing it's inside of two weeks old," he said.
Sue Hill of Morton ships jugs of frozen goat's milk to the center for the fawns' sustenance, and they are doing well on it, Johnson said.
He estimates the eight fawns range from 5 to 23 pounds. When they are released, they likely will weigh up to 40 pounds — and have the strength of the wild.
"The biggest I released last year was around 43 pounds, and they can tear your clothes off at that size," Johnson said.
A state law enforced by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department prohibits Texans from keeping and raising deer, but the center has special state and federal licenses to rehabilitate animals.
Johnson said, "Sometimes we get a heads-up over the phone. Somebody wants to know how to take care of one, and we talk them into going ahead and giving it to us, and remind them that it is breaking the law to have it."
Sometimes, there are some unusual fawn deliveries to the center. One fawn at the center came from the Central Texas area.
"Believe it or not, a lady was passing through and she had kept this fawn for eight weeks — it was traveling with her," Johnson said.
"We were scared it was going to be a pet. When she released it to us, she left us with some cooked brown rice, two or three kinds of real nice, high-protein dog food and some show-goat chow. She had been mixing its formula.
"It had an embroidered collar with its name tag and phone numbers — and she had it on a dog harness, leading it with a leash," he said. "She knew everything except that she was breaking the law, I guess. Her husband was doing some contracting here in town. They came one evening to look the place over like they were looking at a kennel or something, and said they thought this would be a pretty good place to bring a deer."
When Johnson is taking care of the fawns, he tries to limit the number of people the fawns see, because they tend to gravitate toward a person the way they would have done with their mother.
Lee explained, "Hunger is the strong motivating factor, and as they get weaned off the bottle, Barry is going to walk in there and just put food down. We discourage petting and talking to them, and keep them away from people. We don't want to make them pets."
When it is time for release, Johnson will take some to his private, 160-acre ranch, where he can soften the transition by setting out food and water on the weekends.
Johnson said he realizes he is not saving the world by the work he is doing. But he thinks it gives the fawn a better chance of surviving.
"I have to accept that it may later be killed by a predator, by man or by automobiles," he said.
The volunteer has been caring for fawns at the center for three years, and sees them occasionally after they are released.
"We had a white-tail deer last year that me and my wife started calling Big Eyes. I identified him later on in the year on my place. And we have pictures of a fawn that is still there that comes around from last year. He has antlers, they're getting probably 11 inches high right now," he said.
"Everybody thinks I can't identify them. But I can."
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