I first saw her in early April, during a fishing trip to Western Maryland. The deer foraged for anything tender, green and new on a grassy slope leading to a forest of hemlock, maples and pines. As she climbed the slope, there was something clearly unusual about her. The doe had been injured; each step she took was heavy, awkward and unnatural. As she got closer to me, I realized she was missing her left foreleg. There was nothing but nub there.
I watched her climb slowly into the forest, her nose focused on the understory as she hobbled along.
It was a first for me, and the sight of the limping deer set off a cascade of emotions — from pity to sympathy, respect to admiration — and questions: Had she been born this way? Had she survived a traumatic injury? If so, why hadn’t she bled to death?
How did this pitiful creature survive?
Two friends who are hunters suspected the doe had lost her long, slender leg in a collision or had been wounded by gunshot. The missing leg was unlikely a birth defect, they said.
State Farm, being in the insurance business, conducted a study of collisions a couple of years ago and concluded that a Maryland driver had a one in 112 chance of hitting a deer. But the odds are probably greater in Garrett, the state’s westernmost county, bordering West Virginia and rural Pennsylvania. According to State Farm, the odds of hitting a deer are far greater in those two states.
It’s hard to imagine a deer surviving a collision with a car or truck, but it’s possible.
I found more speculation about the causes of three-leggedness in online hunter forums: While a fawn, a deer might be cut by a hay mower in a farm field; or maybe a leg gets caught and torn away by a wire fence when a deer becomes frightened and flees.
Whatever the cause, the three-legged doe who stood browsing 20 yards away had survived.
I respected her resilience, her powerful instinct for survival. I admired the way she had obviously adapted. She had come through another long Garrett County winter and now, like other deer, she was looking a little underfed and needed to find food.
I was genuinely moved by this, and wanted to help her, giving into that sappy human instinct.
On subsequent trips to the same area in April and May, I looked for the three-legged doe and found her. So I bought some deer corn and scattered it under the hemlocks and pines where I had first spotted her. Other deer came, including young bucks, and they helped themselves to the feast I’d left in the woods. I have seen up to five deer at a time move into the area to browse. But the three-legged doe was always by herself, leading me to surmise that she had been rejected by other deer — another cause of my admiration. She obviously had learned to live on her own, without following the herd.
Deer usually flee at a flicker of trouble. I wondered how Marie-Rose — that’s what I started calling her — would do with only three legs. While watching her from a distance, I always tried to remain still and silent. But, on my most recent trip to her browsing grounds, I apparently spooked her. I was shocked at how fast she moved, bouncing through brush like any of a hundred whitetails I’ve seen flee in panic.
I saw courage in Marie-Rose, indulging the anthropomorphic tendency to attribute human qualities to wild animals.
In a long career as a newspaper guy, I’ve met people who despaired at the bad turn their lives took — from illness or injury, from self-inflicted misery or horribly bad luck. Some became so despondent they took their own lives. I make no judgement about those who could not cope with adversity and pain. Life is hard. Some people land in the dark forest and never get out; they deserve sympathy and empathy.
I’ve also known many fellow humans who, faced with all kinds of problems, learned to adapt and live their lives to the fullest. I’ve admired — been awed by — parents who raised a child with profound disabilities. In fact, a few hours after I first saw Marie-Rose under the hemlocks, I went to a supermarket to shop. In the parking lot, I saw a man pushing a wheelchair, and in the wheelchair was a young man — presumably the older man’s son — who did not have legs.
It seems patronizing to express it in public, but I harbor genuine feelings of admiration for those who persevere, despite their disabilities, and those who devote their lives to helping others, kin or not. I wonder if I could muster such courage and commitment. I wonder. I look at the young man in the wheelchair, and the older man pushing him, and I think of Marie-Rose hobbling alone through the woods, and I wonder.
Dan Rodricks writes weekly for Baltimore Fishbowl. He can be reached via danrodricks.com
