Fawn among the flowers
by Dr Wolfgang Kuhn
If you should stumble across this small yet wonderful bundle of life, a tiny baby
deer lying curled up in a meadow, please act like Moses confronted with the burning
bush. Not that you need to remove your shoes, but you should stop in your tracks
immediately and watch it silently from a distance.
Any further approach would mean danger for this little one, and a tenderly meant
touch would actually be its death sentence!
This is because the scent of a human, clinging to its delicate young hide, would
cause the mother to stay away in fear. Nothing could bring her back to suckle her
infant, and it would have to die in misery.
Many people, on seeing such a young fawn lying in a meadow by itself, mistakenly
assume that it has been abandoned by its mother. Year in, year out, many young deer
die as a result of being handled in ignorance.
In fact, the doe is always in the vicinity of her offspring, even though it appears
she has abandoned it. She purposely keeps herself a certain distance away, so that
predators might not be alerted to the presence of the helpless infant. She tucks
it into this safe hiding place for the first three to five days after birth, until
it is old enough to follow her for significant distances.
Why should a wildflower meadow in spring be the most suitable hiding place for a
baby deer? Because nowhere else would this motionless little body be less noticeable!
Its white-spotted hide becomes ‘optically dissolved’ into the many white
spots of countless blossoms on the meadow; a near-perfect camouflage. In any other
place, for example in a dark leafy forest glen, its white spots would make it particularly
noticeable.
You will never see a mother deer hide her baby in the wrong place—always into
the exactly appropriate type of hideaway. It goes without saying, that the behaviour
of the infant fawn is also perfectly suited to the whole purpose of the camouflage.
As mother withdraws from the scene, baby doesn’t follow but ducks down into
the grass and stays motionless, as if it knows that any movement could betray its
presence.
The most amazing thing of all is that even the development of this little deer before
it is born appears to be totally geared towards this immensely purposeful behaviour
of mother and child. The egg cell in the doe’s body may be fertilized in the
height of summer, but nevertheless the young embryo, for four or five months, barely
grows at all in any noticeable way. However, in the middle of winter it starts to
grow in a normal fashion. It’s only through this amazing delay mechanism that
the baby deer comes into the world at exactly the right time—in May/June—just
when the meadows are in full bloom!
All this marvellous, purposeful interactive programming could not result from evolutionary
‘chance and necessity’. Surely it speaks, instead, of creative design
and planning—for those who have eyes to see.
(Translated and adapted from the German by Carl Wieland.)
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