I finally snagged good photos of Pi’s injured leg so I can understand what she’s got going on there. Below, here’s the outside and the inside of the leg. But there’s more to it.
Below, the photo on the left shows the morphology of her leg. In other words, it’s comparing her anatomy to yours, i.e. what would be the human equivalent. The white line is her thigh and calf. Quite similar to the human set up. The green line is pretty much one integrated, complicated ankle/foot thing. The human set up is way different, but also complicated. Her hooves would be your toes, nope… her hooves would be your toenails. The complexity of that ankle/foot set up helps deer jump, pivot, and spring around so well. I’m not certain whether the bony protuberance between the white calf line and the green “foot” line is an ankle bone or what, but it’s surely a joint of some kind. The photo on the right finally illustrates that what she’s missing is almost all of her ankle/foot area. You can match up the parts noted with arrows. The furry end of her truncated limb is the start of that furry patch with the scent gland near or in it. I always figured it was just some weird furry growth capping off a wound.
I’m not sure what that “different” furry patch is, beyond it being near some glands, but they all have it. First time I noticed it was on a fawn (below). And while we’re here, in that fawn photo, you can also really see how deer legs are built for cold. There is not much going on there in the leg near the ground, not near as much to keep warm as there is from the thighs on up.
Missing leg aside, Pi and her fawns got around just fine on the property. In the vid below, notice there are THREE fawns with Pi. The first fawn comes up into the yard from the river and heads to the right of the screen into the flower garden. Then Pi comes in with two more fawns. And yep, I’d baited “someone” with those grapes, and it was a nice surprise it was Pi that found them. One other thing that seems different about her from last year is she seems a little more tentative about my presence this year.
For most of September, it was Pi and her two fawns and the Auntie and her two fawns. That’s a lot of deer for an acre and a half, but they mostly managed it well. Pi and her fawns staked out shelter holes in the back yard and in the herb circle area out front, and the Auntie and her fawns tended to use the paddocks. They all browsed in the backyard, the field, along the paths and in the grape vines, mostly separately, but as in the video above, there were multiple times one of does had an extra fawn in tow. I have no idea how that happens, how a fawn makes a “choice” to wander off with a doe that’s not its mom. The does were definitely engaged in shared fawn raising. Eventually, there were a couple incidents related to such large animals trying to navigate a small space all together.
Next Post: The Incidents
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