blackbearmagic:

blackbearmagic:

moreanimalia:

therodamas:

awwww-cute:

Saved this little guy from a busy parking lot (Source: http://ift.tt/1Fe8mFd)

Hey this might be cute and I know OP isn’t actually the person that did this, but please don’t reblog this uncritically and encourage this kind of behavior. Mother deer frequently leave their fawns for hours on end to feed, and because of this people often try to ‘save’ them thinking that they’ve been abandoned. If the parking lot was really that busy this person should have maybe attempted to contact the owners and set up a blockade around the fawn, or moved it off the pavement into the trees seen in the picture. Picking up a fawn, let alone putting it in your car, is extremely stressful for the animal and could have possibly prompted the mother to attack if she was nearby. 

Deer might be cute, but they’re wild animals and carry diseases. If you suspect that a fawn has been abandoned (as in you haven’t seen the mother for a couple days), call a local professional to deal with the animal in a proper, safe method. 

^ as above. Don’t go just picking up wildlife you think might be abandoned.

Wildlife rehabber here. 

There are only three reasons you should ever remove a fawn from where you found it:

1. if it is visibly wounded
   
2. if it is covered in flies or fly eggs
3. if it is crying out

If any of those three things are true, then you should contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitator and ask to bring the fawn in to them. Do not attempt to raise it on your own. Fawns have very specific nutritional requirements and need special formula–you can’t just feed it the cow’s milk in your fridge–and require round-the-clock care. If you’re hand-raising a fawn, or any other baby mammal, you’re not gonna get a full night’s sleep until it’s weaned. Not unless you want a stunted, emaciated baby. 

We’ve already had a couple kidnapped fawns this season, and it is not pretty. The animals were stressed and miserable, and their mothers were certainly the same. When their fawns go missing, does spend 4-10 days searching the area and calling out for their babies–highly stressful and completely unnecessary.

Additionally, if you see a fawn, do not touch it unless you have been told by a licensed rehabber to bring it in. For the first few weeks of their lives, fawns’ legs are too weak to follow their mother, so the does will leave them in a safe place while they go out to eat. During this period of their lives, fawns have no scent. This is a defensive adaptation that protects the fawn from predators; when the fawn lays perfectly still and silent, predators will sometimes walk right past it without realizing it. If you touch a fawn, you will transfer some of your scent onto its fur. Not only does this make it more noticeable to predators, but there’s a chance that the doe will reject her baby because it’s basically become a coyote magnet.

So in short, leave fawns where you find them. If it’s in a busy area, try to keep people away from the fawn. In extreme circumstances, a rehabber may ask you to move it, to a quieter area nearby, but you should only do so if you are instructed to. But you’re most likely to find it in a quiet spot away from people, in which case you should just leave it alone.

The doe will not return to nurse her fawn if she sees, hears, or smells you anywhere near it–you’re a dangerous predator and she doesn’t want you to know where her baby is–so the best thing you can do is just leave. Leave the area completely. If you want to check back in about twelve hours, you can, but the absolute best thing you can do for a quiet, clean, uninjured fawn is leave it alone.

It’s gonna be fawn season soon, and I have a lot more followers now than I did when I originally made this post.

Read. Know. Please stop kidnapping fawns.