“I almost stumbled over the old deer,” said Dauphin, “and I never would have discovered this little chap if I hadn’t fallen over him. However did they manage to hide so well and keep so still while we were running all about them?”
The fawn, which was probably two weeks old, was “all legs,” as the Allen boys expressed it. The back of his brown coat was flecked with spots of white, while his under parts were pure white. Tying both his front and hind legs with their handkerchiefs, the boys took turns in carrying their new pet home, where they soon succeeded in teaching it to drink milk. When it was caught it could easily run about under the kitchen table, but it throve and grew so rapidly and became so boisterous in its manifestations of friendship, that, in a few weeks, Mrs. Thompson declared it had outgrown its place of household pet.
The boys built a pen of rails, and cut fresh grass for it every day, and later in the season at the advice of Mr. Thompson, added the twigs of the poplar or aspen to its diet. They would cut down a young tree and stand it in the corner of the pen. When the fawn had nibbled all the tender twigs from the lower limbs he would rise upon his hind legs and walk about the tree on two feet, browsing from the higher branches, just as though that was the natural way for a deer to get about, as indeed it was in a situation of that kind.
As the fall approached the young deer began to lose his spotted coat of brown, and take on a winter suit of grey. Little hard knobs could be felt on his head where the “spikes,” or one-prong horns would appear the following months. Like a rapidly developing boy he began to take on “manish” ways, and to show an intention of “seeing the world.” Although the boys increased the height of his pen to ten rails, even that would not hold him when the desire to roam came too strongly upon him.
On one of these occasions, when the boys had missed him from the pen, they came across him a quarter of a mile away in the meadow, acting in a peculiar manner. Long before they reached him they could hear his angry snorts and could see the hair along the ridge of his back sticking up like quills upon a porcupine. The young deer was dancing around in a circle, face toward the center, now advancing, now springing quickly back, all the time his eyes fixed upon one spot. Just as the boys were drawing near he gave a spring into the air, and, bunching his four feet together, came down like a bolt out of the sky. The stroke was evidently effective, for on the ground was the writhing threshing body of a huge black rattlesnake, the dreaded massasauger, with head severed from the body as cleanly as if cut with a knife. The sharp hoofs had done quick and sure execution.
Unable to keep the deer in confinement as he would grow larger the boys disposed of him for a good sum to a collector for an eastern city park.
CHAPTER III
THE GREAT BLUE HERON
“Dauph,” said Robert Allen one morning in early spring, “I saw a pair of wood ducks over in Cut-off Slough yesterday, and the drake had the handsomest plumage I ever saw on a bird. He would make a fine specimen for your collection.”