5:55
An orphaned fawn and the dog who hugs him
Every morning, before anything else, Beth had a baby deer to feed. He was an orphan, and he would be waiting just outside her door. more
She had found him lying in the road, right after someone hit his mother with a car. It was a hot day and the fawn was dehydrated. Beth knew she had to move fast, so she picked him up and brought him home.
The fawn, Copper, took to her quickly. "I didn't expect him to be so affectionate," Beth says. "He is super sweet and very loving."
Close as they were, Beth did not want to take his freedom away. Copper lived on her porch so he would get used to the outdoors, and when he slipped into the house, she sent him back out. "I love you too, but you gotta go." She gave him the mom he needed and still let him stay wild.
Beth wasn't the only one who fell for him. Her German shepherd, Rocky, took the baby deer under his wing, and Copper became what Beth calls Rocky's "little tiny shadow." When they play, Rocky prances like a deer himself, then swings a front leg over Copper's shoulders, the way one friend throws an arm around another.
SaveCopper got old enough to lose his baby spots, and two small knots on his head, his "buttons," would someday be antlers. After about eight months of him always being there, one day he didn't come back. Beth wasn't worried, and he turned up the next day, a little more on his own. He still runs from her husband and kids after seeing them his whole life, which she is glad of.
Soon he was gone most of the day, then a day or two at a time, and each time he came home his antlers were bigger. Then he stayed away for more than a month. One night on her drive home, Beth spotted him in a field, and he looked great. "I do wish he would come back just for me," she says, "but I'm happy that he is out living his best life."
Plenty of people are sure he will be back. Someday, they say, the young buck will turn up at her door again, all grown, maybe with a family of his own to show her.
