Missouri Department of Conservation

Awwwwwww!

• Photos

Fawn At Office

Don Prost admires the new lawn ornament outside Nancy Dubbert's office.

Office Fawn

This white-tailed deer fawn showed up outside MDC Internal Auditor Nancy Dubbert's office window in mid-June.

Nursing Fawn

Later that afternoon, the doe returned to nurse her fawn and moved it to a more secluded location.

One morning last week, the Conservation Department’s internal auditor, Nancy Dubbert, rang my phone. Our conversations normally revolve around financial matters, but her business that day had a more direct, personal link to conservation.

Nancy’s office is on the ground floor, with windows that look out on a lawn on one side and a little blind corner on the other. Back in that corner, bedded down on rounded river gravel about the color of a whitetail fawn was … a whitetail fawn. It couldn’t have been more than a day or two old. Nancy was calling to see if I needed photos of newborn deer.

Well, who is going to turn down that assignment? I grabbed my camera and hurried upstairs, wondering how long it would take the fawn’s mother to find a more isolated spot for her little one. That blind corner probably seemed like a perfect hiding place for her speckled treasure the night before, but when the building began humming with activity, she was sure to reconsider.

By the time I got my photos, word of the blessed event had spread throughout the building, and Nancy was playing host to a more or less continuous parade of adoring aunts and uncles. Yes, we keep plenty busy here, but now and then you have to stop and smell the flowers, especially when it’s your job to care for the flowers.

That afternoon, the fawn was seen standing out on the lawn, nursing from his mother. Another co-worker snapped a photo of that, too. That is the last we have seen of the little fella, but he sure brightened our day and reminded us all of what we are working toward.

-Jim Low-