The Pleasure of Their Company

I’d decided that I would offer him a bottle every two to three hours… Surely by midnight he would be hungry.  Midnight came and went, as did 2:30 am, and 5 am, with no interest from him in milk.  A couple of the times I went out I think I even woke him.  I was glad someone was getting some sleep.

Around 9:30 am I awoke…Then I went into the stall.  He was nuzzling me all over, surely saying “got milk?”  As I held out the bottle and tried to put it in his mouth, it wasn’t “got milk” at all, it was “no way josé ”.  Well, what do we do now?, I thought.  He’d been without sustenance or nutrition for at least sixteen-plus hours.  I called my deer expert friends at our zoo… They told me exactly what to do and how to do it, although as I listened, I could not really believe I would be able to do what they described, or that it would work

I was ready to follow the directions for the game, er, procedure, which I called:  “How Many Hands Does It Take To Fold A Fawn?” 

It goes like this:  when he came to me, with an arm and hand on each of his sides and shoulders, [ I don’t know about you, but that seemed to call for four arms and hands, already using up all mine and putting me “in the red” before we‘d even begun], I was to turn him around, and guide and pull him backwards, gently but firmly, between my spread-out knees;  closing my knees and using them, my upper body and arms to hold him in place, again gently but firmly, [that seemed to call for at least another two arms and hands, at a minimum -- so now I needed, what? six?],  one by one I was to fold up each of his small legs under him, [now, exactly how many of the six hands and arms already committed to his sides, shoulders, and holding him in place, would I be able to borrow from their already-designated tasks to accomplish this folding-up maneuver?  Sounded to me like robbing Peter to pay Paul, when Peter was already having trouble making ends meet], making him into a compact and manageable package -- the operative word being “manageable”; then, leaning my upper body against his back at the same time that I brought the bottle to his mouth with one hand, I was to use my other hand to get the bottle into his mouth however much prying it might take. [definitely another two hands called for -- making a grand total of eight.]   Do I even need to say that it was not easy and that it did not go smoothly?   And did I mention I don’t have eight hands? 

Not only mighty, he was wiry and wily.  I’d get two legs folded, and be going for the third, when he’d get one or both of the first ones unfolded.  I’d get three folded, and think we were practically home free, only to have him get one, two, or even three of the three, unfolded, just as I was getting the fourth folded, and here we go again.  It was like trying to nail jell-o to the wall.  Actually, I felt I would have had better odds with the jell-o.  At least it didn’t have a mind of its own. 

Finally, a half hour and five or six folding-unfolding bouts later, Baby Buck had a bottle in his mouth and was drinking!  …the deer expert said that once he realized that this thing, the bottle, had milk in it, it would be a breeze.  Bring on the breezes, I was exhausted, and hot.