This is the doe Guinevere’s arrival story, but I’m not yet going to explain her name. I believe she is one of the fawns that was here in 2021 with Pi and the Auntie. While it’s not always the case, a healthy doe can birth a fawn her first year, experiencing a successful rut at four to six months old, and if she bears at that young of an age, will usually only have only one fawn instead of twins. So biology fits. And Guinevere isn’t very big, not as big as the former yearling is now, so the age timeline of Guinevere being the Auntie’s younger sister may also fit. The rest is speculation because of behavior, easy familiarity with the place, logic, etc.
So spring 2022 comes, the river goes up and down benignly, the garden work starts, and plants in the greenhouse wait to go in the ground.
June 10th, I take the pictures above and below, but by June 11, I don’t even remember I took them. The doe is clearly involved in something intentional, and looking back, I understand why she was there. I took these pics on the 10th, and on the 11th, the doe brought a roughly one day old fawn here, so in these pics, she was likely scoping things out. She may have been here browsing, or she may have been here intentionally, drawn by the prior year’s beneficial experiences here. Note she’s not pregnant.
The photo below, right, was previously used to show a path into the backyard. I was on an old pool deck at the end of that path cutting wolfberry out of it (inset map; inset photo). It got hot and I headed to the house for a drink. Inside, I remembered something I needed to do out front, decided to grab my phone, walked out the front door, and saw the doe on the path. She had a tiny tiny fawn with her, barely visible in the grass at her feet. The neighbor had watched her walk up the old channel with it that morning.
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