The fawns

(photo from the National Park Service, nps.gov)


I have learned several things about deer over the past few years.

For one, their only natural predator around here these days is the automobile. Which, while lethal, indiscriminate and bloody, does not really do an efficient job keeping their population in check.

That, in turn, means that deer are becoming too numerous for their habitat, leading them to ransack gardens and forests and vegetation that traditionally were beyond the bounds of their delicate palate.

(I wondered how Johnny Appleseed managed to carpet the country with fruit trees when the deer chewed mine to the nub. The deer back then evidently preferred other, more native, fare. They have since become gourmands, experimenting with all sorts of exotic foods of the garden and forest.)

One devastating result is that there are so many deer with such great appetites that their population is decimating the tender shoots of our native trees and destroying the undergrowth of our forests. Whole next-generations of forest are being systematically destroyed. Our forests, in other words, are dying.

This is bad news when Baltimore City has set a goal of doubling its tree canopy (that is, the area of ground covered by foliage) and Baltimore County must preserve and grow its forest as well.

Most gardeners and tree people in the area know that despite its doe-eyed look, "Bambi" is no longer an innocent, vulnerable denizen of the woods. The woods themselves are the ones that are vulnerable.

Like much of nature these days, people have so affected our forests' "natural" course that the once-self-regenerating forests must be helped, or engineered, to keep them healthy. That is what the field of modern forestry is all about.

I know all this, learned all this and now live all this in my work with the Baltimore Tree Trust. And yet...

My bedroom overlooks a charming, pastoral woodland scene. It is practically the stuff that fairy tales are made of: a moderately-populated field of mostly poplars backing onto a more densely wooded area of poplar, beech, hickory and more.

This patch of woods is part of a greenway of sorts which, I imagine, meanders for at least a mile or so of continuous forest cover, weaving behind and through backyards and treed developments, unbroken by hard surface or roads. It is a haven for the deer.

So quite often, I can look out the very large windows of my bedroom and see a herd of deer nibbling, walking, playing or bedding in my backyard. Today, they were irresistible. Among the small cluster of adults were three fawns, I would guess about 2 months old. The older deer like to stay just inside the more wooded area of our yard. The younger deer come just inside the more open area. So there they were, three babies bravely learning to make their way in this treacherous world, lying placidly, contentedly each at the foot of their own neighboring tree.

But my land is not flat; it falls slightly away from the house as it reaches for the valley beyond. Each fawn, then, lay in a spot where the yard dips away, so that from the house, all you could see poking up above the blades of grass were three small pairs of ears. Ever alert, the ears darted this way and that, sharp sentries on duty even as their host bodies relaxed in the cool shade of the glen.

To me, the earth looked as if it had sprouted bugs of a new kind, listening devices, to spy on us earthlings even as I was spying on the fawns. I wondered what intelligence the earth was after; what was it hoping to learn. Surely, sadly, humans were threat enough to the earth that it should want to conduct its own counter-intelligence against us, to protect itself from our harshest behavior. How do we look, I wondered, from the earth's perspective?

The tableau lasted but a few minutes. The espionage completed, the gentle spies got up and moved further down, more deeply into the woods.