98 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



the Moose track or had fallen in and could not get out. It was 

 about the size of a house cat, but with longer legs." 



No North American member of the Deer family makes 

 any pretence at a nest. The home of the young is the neigh- 

 bourhood where they are born. They may consider the old 

 tree-top their head-quarters, but they will lie in a different part 

 of it every day. Moreover, in Texas, A. Y. Walton says:" 

 " I have never known them to lie, at this stage of their life, as 

 the young sheep and goats do, almost touching one another, 

 but they lie with more or less distance separating them, never 

 very far apart and never very close together." 



The weight of the fawn at birth is about 4§ pounds.^ 

 J. W. Titcomb gives the weight of one at 3I pounds. ^^ 



The mother visits them perhaps half a dozen times a day 

 to suckle them. I think that at night she lies next them to 

 warm them, although the available testimony shows that, in 

 the daytime, she frequents a solitary bed several yards away. 

 I suppose that she never goes out of hearing of their squeak, 

 except when in search of water. If found and handled at this 

 time the fawns instinctively *'play dead," are limp, silent, and 

 unresisting. 



Their natural enemies now are numerous. Bears, Wolves, 

 Panthers, Lynxes, Fishers, dogs. Foxes, and eagles are the 

 most dangerous of the large kind. But the spotted coats of 

 the fawns and their death-like stillness are wonderful safe- 

 guards. Many hunters maintain, moreover, that fawns give 

 out no scent. Doubtless this means that their body-scent is 

 reduced to a minimum; and, since they do not travel, they 

 leave no foot-scent at all. 



There is one more large creature that some would put 

 on the fawn's Hst of enemies (but, so far as I can learn, without 

 good reason), and that is — their own father. I can believe 

 that a doe coming upon a fawn clearly not her own, might 



^^ Forest and Stream, June 15, 1895, p. 485. 

 ^"Homaday, Am. Nat. Hist., 1904, p. 130. 

 *' Forest and Stream, March 18, 1899, p. 205. 



