Later, a man driving by saw the dead doe’s belly moving. He did the courageous thing — stopped, pulled out his knife, and performed a roadside Caesarean section. And he got in touch with Colorado Parks & Wildlife, which appeared a while later in the person of game warden Travis Sauder.
M. and I are wildlife transport volunteers, and our telephone rang too. I reached Sauder on his mobile while he was en route to get the fawn. We arranged to meet down in Pueblo, and when we pulled up, there he was in his state truck, with the fawn in his lap, wrapped in a purple bath towel.
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| If the fawn grows up, he will look like this. |
We put him into a carrier and drove back toward the foothills and the rehabilitation center, where he quickly downed a bottle of constituted goat's milk, and, for the first time, stood up on all four legs.
It's odd to think that the first other creature he saw were all humans — and before long he may be sharing an enclosure with some mule deer fawns (assuming that some are brought in, which is almost certain) — but he will eventually go free and meet some other antelope. Instinct is strong.
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