“Have you seen the bitty baby fawn?” My neighbors asked.

Everyone on my road was so excited by the baby fawn and the mama doe who would appear at dusk in the cornfield like clockwork. I was the only one who hadn’t seen it yet. I kept my camera on the ready at dusk but I would only see adult deer not the baby.

Until about an hour ago.

Earlier this afternoon I was over at my friends house and she had been conducting this class on vertical succulent gardening made out of re-purposed items. Well I made one and I wanted to hang it on the wall on my front porch.

So I went out to the porch. All I heard was the buzzing of flies. Then there was a slight breeze and this unmistakable odor of death walked by. At first I didn’t see anything. And I knew from the smell something was dead somewhere and then all of a sudden I saw it- the baby fawn my neighbors were so excited to see.

My first reaction was to scream. Actually it was probably closer to a guttural howl because to see that juxtaposition of innocence and death is a little more than I can handle.

Then I started to cry. Then I called to my husband, only to remember he wasn’t home yet.

Mother Nature isn’t just a cruel mistress today, she’s a bitch. I understand this is the theory of Darwinism in effect, but it doesn’t make it any easier. It’s easy to see roadkill on the side of the road and keep on going, because you won’t have to think about it again. But to see this, literally in the middle of one of my flowerbeds underneath an azalea bush, is just gut-wrenching.

I can’t clean baby fawn up. I don’t think I am even going to be able to sit on my front porch for quite a while. All I hear, even in the air conditioning, is the buzzing of all those damn flies.

My husband says from what he can tell it looks like it came to my garden to hide and die. I just feel so awful I didn’t even know it was there. He’s not sure it was actually attacked. He thinks it came to my garden to die.

There is also another dead fawn deep in our woods my husband tells me. He took baby fawn to be buried. The second fawn doesn’t look like it was attacked so maybe it was deer wasting disease?

I was having an awesome day until this. Mother Nature you are a joy sucker today. I know my husband thinks I am being a drama queen and it’s a wild animal and it’s nature, but I just am so sad right in this moment.

RIP baby fawn.