Today was Linda’s “Medicare minus one” birthday and she started it off by Facetiming on her iPad with our son and grand-daughter.  I put the coffee on to brew and joined the Facetime session.  Madeline was initially engaged in consuming a great quantity of blueberries and getting most of them in her mouth.  She was obviously feeling much better than the last time we saw her.  Breakfast was followed by a good face washing and then active exploration of the house and the wearing of adult size flip flops, which is one of the most fun things to do at the moment.  Their plans for the day included her first visit to the local water park, which has hours reserved for very small children.

Linda called the dentist’s office and got a call back just after 9 AM.  They said they could see her at 1:30 PM and she accepted the appointment.  A little while later I went outside to get the mail and discovered a fawn curled up on the door mat in front of our front library doorwall.  Its eyes were open and it was clearly alive as it watched me carefully but did not otherwise move.  I searched online and found a list of wildlife rehabilitators on the Michigan DNR website.  It was arranged by county which made it easy to locate Diane Solecki in Pinckney.  She was listed as specializing in fawns so I called her and she talked me through what to do and what to look for and directed me to her website where she had all of that information, and a lot more, for our reference.

Linda and I went out to examine the fawn according to the directions Diane gave us.  To our surprise, as soon as we started to handle it, it got to its feet, ran away to the east, and disappeared into thick cover.  That was probably unfortunate for its survival, but its odds were not very good where it was, lying exposed and very visible in the hot sun all day.  Per Diane’s instructions Linda mashed some strawberries with bread and put it over by the woods along with a bowl of water in the hope it would find it and eat and drink.  There was plenty of evidence of deer in that area so there was also some small hope that the mother might wander through there on her regular circuit and find her baby.  I checked the bowl and paper plate several times but there was no sign of it having been visited by any animals.

I got a call from Steve at Village Landscape Development letting me know they had to attend to another job first thing this morning and would be at our house around noon.  He called back around 3 PM to let me know it would be tomorrow morning between 8:00 and 8:30 AM.  It was hot and humid today, and by 3 PM the workers were drained.

Since today was Linda’s birthday, and she was still sore and tired from not sleeping well, we went out for dinner.  There is a salad shop in Brighton named Toma’s.  I had been there once and based on Trip Advisor reviews she wanted to try it.  As we were pulling out of the driveway we noticed an adult deer go into the woods to the west of our neighbor’s yard across the street.  There is a lot of evidence of deer in and around our yard and neighborhood but we only see them occasionally.  We wondered if it might be the fawn’s mother but there was no way to tell.

At Toma’s we each had a “create your own” salad with a piece of grilled pita bread.  The cook reversed our greens, but we didn’t realize it until we had each eaten half our salads. Our waitress was delightful but a bit math challenged.  I gave her $16.50 to cover a $16.29 bill and had to help her make the change.

We stopped at Staples on the way home to get a pad of large graph paper.  I am drawing plans for an alternative design for the bus barn that might make it easier for me to build myself.  Back at the house I spotted an adult deer lying down by the marsh at the NE corner of our yard near NW corner of the pond to our east.  I spent the rest of the evening editing photos from Saturday to post on our blog.  We had vegan ice cream to celebrate Linda’s birthday.