GIFT OF DEER by Helen Hoover

Author:Helen Hoover [Hoover, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-83135-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

Near the end of March on one of those thrilling days when spring is in the air although the ground is still white, Ade and I heard Mama making a great fuss. We went out to see her standing just below the bank, on which her big fawns huddled uneasily together. Mama looked toward us and quieted. We saw nothing out of the way, but when we turned to go in she began again to snort and blow and stomp. I walked slowly toward her and she grew even more excited, finally striking violently at the ground with both forefeet and bleating. I stopped. Mama was evidently trying to tell me there was danger. But what was she so afraid of?

Ade spoke softly from the door.

“You’re right beside the henhouse. I put the screen door in there today. Remember how Bedelia startled Peter?”

So that was it. From the corner of my eye I could just glimpse Bedelia, moving back and forth in her screened doorway and pretty excited herself by all these goings-on. Mama was quiet but tense, watching me closely. How could I tell her there was no danger? When she was uncertain about anything, she stalked it. Feeling a little silly, I decided to stalk the henhouse.

I backed up and made a wide circle behind it, then cautiously approached from the far side, leaned forward and down, and stared at Bedelia—who stared back. Then I straightened up, relaxed, and walked in front of the coop as though it were completely unimportant. When I was back at my first position, I looked at Mama, who still watched tensely.

She turned and looked at the fawns, then moved in her own wide circle until she, too, approached obliquely and peered into the coop. I don’t know what might have happened if Bedelia had flapped her wings or cackled, but she merely returned Mama’s scrutiny.

Mama went back to her position below the bank, faced the henhouse, and stomped twice, quickly and lightly, the first tap with her right forefoot, the second with her left. The fawns leaped from the bank, one on each side of her, and headed straight past Bedelia to the grain, with Mama following more slowly.

This is the only incident in which I have been able definitely to connect a communicating stomp pattern with a subsequent action. A short time later, I read Arctic Wild and learned that Lois Crisler had used a method similar to mine to reassure a frightened wolf. Only then did I feel confident that I had managed to communicate with Mama by imitating deer behavior.

It is a human trait to expect animals to understand people, but it is absurd to even hope for this unless people first try to understand animals.

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