Wildbuzz: Fawn with many doting mothers

“The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven”, are oft-quoted Shakespearean lines. The irrepressible bard had elevated mercy to an attribute “enthronèd in the hearts of kings… an attribute to God himself”.
A three-day waif of a barking deer (Kakar) fawn, if not muted by nature, would have vouched for the extraordinary compassion shown by humans. A pack of stray dogs had slaughtered the fawn’s mother in the Nangal jungles. The fawn was rescued after Amritlal, in-charge at the Punjab government’s wildlife interpretation centre, Nangal, was alerted by wildlife conservationist, Parbhat Bhatti.
Amritlal, who opens his heart and wallet generously to rescue and rehabilitate stricken creatures, was recently honoured by the state government for his extraordinary compassion. He unhesitatingly took the trembling fawn under his care.
“I tried to feed the fawn milk with a nippled bottle but the fawn did not respond. It was so terrorised that it would run and scamper at the slightest movement. Imagine, for a child so young, to be suddenly cast into an unfamiliar world without a mother and ‘giants’ (humans) looming all over. I decided to give it milk directly from a goat’s udders. It had worked in previous cases of rescued fawns,” Amritlal told this writer.
However, goat milk is expensive and retails at ₹500 per litre. Amritlal’s acquaintance, Kuldeep, who works at the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB), had a healthy, matriarchal goat, whom his family had affectionately named, Sonia.
Kuldeep agreed but he charged Amritlal ₹400 per day for feeding the fawn. It was then that a noble and gentle lady, Kuldeep’s wife, Sunita Devi, stepped in decisively. Her heart was heavy, she had lost her daughter, Neha, 35, to a prolonged illness just before the Covid-19 lockdown. Neha had left behind a young daughter and her husband who works as a clerk in Panjab University, Chandigarh.
“Sunita returned the ₹400 I had paid for the first day’s feed. She told me that I was spending money on the fawn from my own pocket by transporting it in a car/scooter plus milk costs. If I could do so, why should her family charge money for the fawn’s wellbeing? After that, Sunita Devi got Sonia to feed the fawn for 10 days free of cost. The hungry fawn took naturally to the motherly goat’s udders. The fawn would empty out the ever-patient Sonia’s udders every day,” said Amritlal.
When I spoke to Sunita Devi, the lady turned very emotional. “For me, the fawn was a child who had been torn from his mother. I fed it milk from my beloved goat, Sonia, because for me the fawn was like my own child, a little helpless being who missed his mother. How then, can one charge money for feeding one’s own child?”
After 10 days of feeding on Sonia’s milk, Amritlal bought a female goat for ₹7,000 from his own pocket to feed the fawn. His children, Saiyyam and Ekta, doted on the fawn, whom they named, Seetu.
“Once Seetu had grown into a sub-adult, I decided to rehabilitate him in the jungle because I did not want him to get too accustomed to humans. He was born free and was meant to return to the wilderness. So, I installed a night-vision camera for surveillance and released Seetu at night near a jungle waterhole frequented by Barking deer. On the fourth night, the camera recorded Seetu mixing up with a group of three deer and walking into the jungle. Seetu had returned home,” said Amritlal.
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