When Fawns Laugh, They Do It Through Their Feet

The other day, early in the morning, I noticed my orange cat, Loki, sitting by the back door staring out the window.  He isn’t the talker that Pippin is.  Pippin will chortle and chirp at chipmunks, squirrels and birds.  But one thing Pippin and Loki are silent for is deer.

“Whatcha see?” I asked Loki as I walked to the back door.  Loki glanced at me over his shoulder and then returned to the window.

Sure enough, there in the back yard, with just her head and neck showing from behind my car was a deer.  I assumed that it was the same deer I had seen in my yard almost every day for the past few weeks.  It is still strange to me that there are deer here so close to the city.  I’m not downtown, but it’s definitely an urban environment.

The other day, when I left for church, and turned around to lock the back door and when I did I startled a deer I didn’t even know was there.  I jumped as suddenly there was an explosion of rat-tat-tat-tat, as the deer’s hooves made contact with the pavement as she leapt from the grass.

Whirling around, I caught sight of the deer who then froze at the sight of me. 

I froze too.

And we both just stood there, until finally I dared to breathe and the deer took off, leaping again over the neighbor’s fence.

Looking back at my interactions with the deer those couple of weeks, she seemed more jumpy and skittish than I have seen before in neighborhood deer.  And as it turned out, there was a reason for that.

That morning I spotted Loki by the window, the second I stepped to the window, the deer noticed me.  She stopped and stared right at me.

I took a step back from the window, hoping somehow I would just vanish, but she continued to watch even as I took another step back and reached for my camera.

(I am smart enough now to keep a camera by the back door.)

Still she refused to look away.

I slowly raised the camera to my eye and zoomed in as best I could through a dirty window.

I always have my camera set to bird mode, so that it takes a series of rapid fire pictures and I sound like the paparazzi outside some celebrity’s house.

Still the deer didn’t move.

I held my breath and prepared for another series of pictures when I saw something move just out of sight of my camera lens.

And then I gasped.

A small fawn had emerged from around the front of the car.

Knobby knees and speckled, still young enough to wobble, still fresh birth thin.  I could see the fawn’s ribs.

I had gasped when the fawn stepped out and I hadn’t taken another breath.

Isn’t it funny what makes us gasp?

In the hospital, when the surgeon wanted to see if it was truly my gallbladder that was inflamed, she took the knuckle of her index finger and dug it in up under my ribs on the right side. 

The pain was so intense, I gasped.

We gasp when we are in pain.  We gasp in fear. 

We also gasp in shock, both good and bad.

We gasp in awe.

That little fawn was so precious and so beautiful and so new, I gasped as I felt my heart grow large in love for God’s creation.

The mama deer had not stopped looking at me and even though I was no threat, when I finally did breathe and let the camera slide down, both mama deer and fawn took off down the alley.

I ran through the house, to the front door and opened it just in time to see the two deer fleeing across my small street and into the neighbor’s yard.

In the dew-laden grass, the fawn did not step as her mother stepped.  The fawn leapt.  She danced.  She bucked.  And dare I say that if fawns laugh, they do it through their feet.

There was so much joy in the fawn.

The mother was scared and protective of her child.

But the child had no idea.  She only knew that there was so much of everything, of space, of air, of smells of grass and trees with bark still spongey from last night’s rain.

I thought of last week’s reading of Jesus saying how we must be like the little children to enter the Kingdom of God and woe … woe to anyone who places a stumbling block in front of one of these children.

As I watched that little fawn, for a moment, I understood the protectiveness that God has for all of us.  We are all His children.  Because as I watched that fawn, I thought I would do anything to protect her.  I ached worrying about her safety with so many cars around.

Imagine, if you can feel this way about a wild animal, how much more does God love you?  How much more does God delight in you?  How much joy do you bring God when you dance, when you laugh?

God loves everything about you.

You breathe.  God loves.

Your heart beats.  God loves.

You smile.  God loves.

Remember that.  We are all newborn fawns to God.

Amen.