JUN-A-10

Thirty three years ago today I graduated in Hill Auditorium on the UMMC campus and received the MD cum laude that has launched quite a few adventures in the succeeding one third of a century.

This morning, it was still raining as it ha been all night, and the stream behind my window was roaring. As I counted up the things I had to do, it seems that most of the urgent ones were involving book work or paperwork for which I should not be disturbed—such as filling out my 2000 income taxes, completing this narrative, chapters past due, and packing up for the next trips to San Antonio and the Big Horn. I was scheduled to run with Joe at 4:30 PM so that I would have to be back here in Montgomery County early. So, I stayed home in the gentle rain on the now fully leafed trees of the Derwood woods, and compiled all the data that will be delivered to morrow to the accountants and money managers. I went down for lunch about the time I had heard the door open where Jim, the postman, delivers the mail. When I went outside to drop a banana peel in the compost heap toward which I had thrown it and it fell short, I walked right into a bushy tailed red fox standing between the inverted canoe and me. He scampered off behind the shed and I did not see him again, although I looked for him repeatedly. Let this be the start of the creature spotting for this eventful day, when nothing much happened out of what would otherwise be quite ordinary.

As I was typing this afternoon, I received a call from Joe at work. I was going to pick him up at home and run with the cell phone, since his wife has told him he must be close to a phone. She entered the month of June without a new baby to add to the two children they already have, but they will not get to July with the same number. They had a doctor’s appointment on Friday, which is why we scheduled the run today. But his wife called around three, so Joe said they were on their way to the doctor now, and they would see later whether he were able to run on any of the subsequent days for which we have made tentative appointments to “run long.” Joe and I may be doing the Inaugural Baltimore Marathon on October 20—which will be the second of my fall blitz of “Seven in Seven.”

This may be the reason I had figured I should run today, for the first time since the Sunday Steamboat Springs marathon, to see if it would be just too punishing to see if the fall series is well beyond rational planning. I reluctantly got dressed in shorts and shoes and singlet, and twiddled around until five o’clock, still not sure whether I was ready to go, and not sure I wanted to. I figured that whenever I am quite reluctant to go, it turns out that just such times are the special winners-- (such as in the snowstorm in March as I was visiting professor at Pittsfield Massachusetts, just before the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler and the Boston marathon, neither of which I was sure I could do until the exhilarating run around Lake Onota just before the International Night with the Berkshire Medical Society residents and staff.) Here we go again.

I had neither Walkman earphones nor anything like a camera or other device, since I did not need to run with the phone, since Joe was already into labors of another sort. I took off from the Lake Needwood parking lot, and ran at a rather brisk pace down the usual bike path. I made it out four miles and confronted a lot of mud at the place where the roaring stream had overflowed. This is the same stream that had started sending water down in that direction from the watershed behind me and the fox at the back of my house. I turned and ran back up the trail, and came close to the bridge that had the water lapping under the planks.

AFTERNOON OF A FAWN
2001 VERSION
TO APPEND MY THOUGHTS FROM THE FIRST SIGHTING, 2000

I stopped when I saw a deer in front of me quite near the stream. At this time of year, it is to easy to see if they are buck or doe, since there would be no antlers, even in velvet, for some of the younger bucks. This one was a doe, however, and I could see that because she was jumpy and squatting, looking like she was trying to urinate and could not make up her mind. She paid no attention to me. As I got closer, she swapped ends, so that she was facing me. She seemed to lunge forward, still not making an effort to see me or to get away from me, looking almost as though she had caught her hind legs in something. I was alert because of the time of year and my own curiosity about how I have so many deer around me, but not until last year had I seen my first newborn fawn. As I was watching, I heard a sound, like a squishing squirt. It could have been from the stream since it was over its banks and even large logs were floating down after the all day and night rain. But, at that moment, I saw her kick forward and turn to start licking her own backside.

I sidled around and saw the afterbirth being tugged, and saw a mound of membranes and something dark and feeble squirming around inside. Here I am, “ab initio”, and I do not have a camera or tape! It did not seem that my obstetric services were needed, and I waited to see if the doe would like the membrane away and pick up pellets, all of which I had described in last year’s “Afternoon of a Fawn” (see insert below). The doe then seemed to see me for the first time or at least figure that I might pose some danger for the first time since her preoccupation probably blotted me out earlier. She slowly walked away down the stream and into a small edge of wooded cover.

I approached as closely as I could to see without leaving any scent too near the white glistening and only faintly wiggling mass. I saw a wet head emerge, but only that much and not more. I figured if I were here watching and others came down the path, almost half of them walking big dogs, I would attract attention to the fawn, and I reluctantly backed off to the trail, and began to run with a plan.

I would go back to the Bronco where I have a fanny pack containing a camera—of course, right? I would then run back and wait until the coast was clear and then take some pictures of the proud event. So, back I ran, to go through e Bronco and find—nothing. I had taken out the fanny pack with the disposable camera in it to pack it for the Big Horn run! I thought, “Well, that may be too bad, but at least I was an eyewitness!” But, then, who would believe me on the audio alone without the video proof? In addition, I thought it was a peculiar coincidence, that the reason I was alone on this run is that a similar “lambing time” phenomenon could be happening with Joe and Betty, and that I would be heading south next week to a similar phenomenon that is common among my friends and neighbors Odocoelius virginiensis ---twinning! I started thinking that maybe I should get a camera and go back to see if there were one or two in there!

I drove back to Derwood, and got out the chicken, and sweet potatoes and put them in the oven, and gathered up a disposable flash camera to put into the other fanny pack in the Bronco (I had previously passed a large alligator snapping turtle up in the mud at the trailside from the overflowing Rock Creek—NOT a terrapin—so maybe the camera still has a good role as standard operating equipment on my wilderness runs in Derwood or in the Big Horn). I carried the Nikon pocket camera, and went back to the Needwood parking lot. By this time, there were many of the MCRRC roadrunners accumulating to take off together, probably at 6:30 PM. I said a rather perfunctory hello to them and ran ahead, a man on a mission. I wanted to get there before I would draw too much attention to what I had seen until I knew it was safe, since several have dogs with them. The now-confessed 25-year old black man who murdered Stottmeyer in January only a mile down the trail was arrested yesterday.

I got to the bridge and slowed down when I saw a runner coming from the opposite direction, so that I would come up on the site where the deer were after he had passed. I pulled out the camera and got it ready, and sidled over the corner of the bridge and peered over into the long grass. Bummer! There was a wet spot with mucus and blood and a dented nest in the unoccupied grass. I was too late!

I took a picture from the bridge of the swollen stream and the wet spot in the grass, and turned to go. The grass is very tall and green and wet—almost ideal cover for deer ticks, the carriers of Lyme Disease. I reluctantly walked into the grass for one quick look, and saw nothing. I backed out. Then I remembered what had happened last year when I had known exactly where the fawn had stumbled to in the ferns in front of my house. I went right to that spot, looked allover it, and could not see the fawn that was surely there. When I went off to do the rest of the grass cutting on June first, I came back and found him right there, this time standing up on wobbly legs, trying to figure out if he should run to or from me, and finally staggering over toward the front door of the house and launching off into space—learning depth perception the hard way. (See insert below)

I went back into the tall grass and parted it slowly in slithering through the wet thigh-high cover toward the stream. Right at the bank, with water lapping over the edge only a meter behind him sat the fawn, trying not to move; yet still looking at me. His backside was covered with flies, which were also buzzing round his ears. Mama had left precipitously enough that she had not licked all the membrane off him and now it was drawing other vermin than the ones she is intended to clean away to avoid attraction—such as the canids and felines. I did not crowd him, but took several pictures in his picturesque riverside location. When he figured I had him spotted anyway, he turned his head around and would look up at me, rather quizzically checking to see if this larger mammal was a source of nurture or terror. It even figured that out when the strange figure issued bolts of lightning from a small black box. It returned to cowering to see if I would lose him again in the tall grass.

I backed away gingerly, still looking to see if there might be another—I am hyper tuned in on Twins! I saw nothing else, and was making my way back to the bridge when a few Road Runners came along. They recognized me, and wondered why I would be so far off the trail in what they had been cautioned were deer tick infested tall grass. I motioned to Peter Hui to keep quiet and to come over. One of the other women did too, although she was leery of what I was up to. I said to her in a whisper, sometimes you just have to trust someone that the experience will be worth it. Since she was with eh whole gang of Road Runners, she shrugged, stared down my pointing finger, and saw nothing. Then I nudged her forward, and wonderment over came her. “Oh, thank you; thank you so much!” We all backed away and they ran on while I waited at the bridge to see if mother would emerge. After about five minutes I heard a rustling in the wooded edge of the stream and expected momma to come out. Of all things, the little fellow stood up, and made his first wobbling steps toward the sound, flicking large hordes of flies away from his rump with his stubbly little tail. He will be ready to leap this swollen stream in a single bound in just a few more weeks!

I ran back, completing a two stage run of over ten miles—for the first comeback after the high altitude marathon. I got in the Bronco, figuring it worked out about right to get home when my dinner would be finished and ready. I drove out of the Lake area, passing the Needwood Manse adjacent to the golf course, which had just had its lawn mowed. On the far side of the lawn stood two deer, bright auburn in the slanting rays of the sun. I picked up the camera when something made me stop.

I had spotted two tan leaves in the middle of the newly mown grassy field. I figured there might be any number of tan leaves around in the fall, but his was the lushest greenest part of the year in Maryland, and I now had an alternative explanation of what those little antennae were. I circled and came up on them, as the abruptly flattened down. I shot a picture of the curled up fawn #2 as it was playing “color me camo” with mama in the distance looking up at me. At the sound of the shutter, this fawn, which had probably been born a day or two ago, bolted to its unsteady feet, and tried to amble away from me and toward Mama. It had only gone about ten feet, when it stopped and turned to look back over its shoulder at me—another Kodacolor moment.

So, maybe I did not find twins, but I have had a double header in this “afternoon of the fawn 2001”

THE FIRST VIEWING OF A NEWBORN FAWN
IN THE JUNE “LAMBING TIME” OF THE MILLENNIUM YEAR
ON THE WING TO ANOTHER ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH:
WITH A SEND-OFF FROM DERWOOD BY ITS NEWEST RESIDENT--
-A REAL THRILL FOR ME AFTER 30 YEARS SEARCHING
FOR JUST THIS PHENOMENON, WHICH HAS FINALLY OCCURRED

THE HIGH POINT OF MY WEEK---
AND I HAVE NOT YET REACHED THE MAIN EVENTS OF THE WEEKEND!

I am up in the ari after a scramble to post to you the email narrative of the Eurasian trip just completed before I set out on this Rocky mountain High, but I cannot wait to tell you about a superb experience I have just had during my last minute domestic chores. I have wiated for this experience for a long time!

I have lived for thirty years in “The Derwood Deer Woods.” Every year while running, particularly near lake needwood, I figure the first of May is the time for the goslings to hatch out and to be shepherded by fiercely protective goos and gander across the trails in front of me like bouncing bundles of golden fluff. As surelly as the first of May has me looking for this evidence of the new life of Derwood spring in the abundant resident Canada goose population, I have been diligently looking around the first of June for evidence of seeig a fresh fawn lying perfectly still in the Derwood woods. They should surely be there given the large number of deer I have around me all the time. I had spotted about eight deer in a group upon my return home from my Eurasian trip in the rainy weekend of the Memorila Day events. They look very good, having shed their ratty winter hair and are a beige brown in color and very well fed, thatnks to all the sprouting of the May springtime woods which they continue to overbrowse; If only I could get them interested in dining on tent caterpillars!

But on my brief veterinary obstetric examinations, it looked to me that they were not yet ready to drop, although you can be assured that every single one of the fertile does was impregnated by the big buck or two I had seen around my house until they probably ran into either a poacher or a car and disappeared before the winter set in. It is strange that the big bucks seem to be the ones who are thinned out first despite the overwhelming majority of the does in the herd around my home!

In February, when I was snowed in by both the heavy snowfall and the clutch failure on the Bronco, I had spotted a red fox in the deep snow trotting around my house over the deer prints in the deep drifted snow. I remember that vividly, but did not have to imagine it now, since those photos were the first ones on the first roll of slides I just picked up and organized into carrousels of the ten rolls of slides that returned to day from my trip. The photos sequence in the Nikon N8008 went from Red Fox in Derwood sow in February to Red Square at the Kremlin in Moscow in May. You can tell by this that I have used the pocket Nikon preferentially when I want to carry something that is not so bulky, and I had not taken a lot of slides with the professional camera since bowhunting in Arizona around my birthday in January.

I have seen goslings aplenty, but had never yet ever spotted a fresh fawn even though I know they must be there and I must have walked right by them on my first of June inspections of the spring woods. They are so perfectly camouflaged despite their striking appearance of dappled white and they lie perfectly motionless, not even visibly breathing when any disturbing threat may be present. The Mama Doe licks all the membrane off the fawn and even eats the pellets around the fawn so there will be no trace of scent from the newborn, so there is a virtually odorless cocoon around the new fawn for any passing predator. Mama also eats her own placenta, a very unusual act for a purely herbivorous animal, which also decreases the evidence around for carnivores, and gives her not only the lost protein as a nutrient but also an ergot like stimulus to uterine contraction. Mama will try to distract visitors to the area of the fawning bed, but not as dramatically as the broken wing ploy of some game birds. By whatever means, they have evaded my detection.

I COME TO DERWOOD IN EARLY AFTERNOON FOR MY
HOME IMPROVEMENT REMODELING APPOINTMENT

I had called Steve, the fellow I had talked with from Add ‘n On and shown the house about two months ago and then heard nothing further from him. It turns out that this was a period of consolidation for the newly formed partnership since a fellow named Steve had been a friend of Steve’s all his life, but they worked solo each with two work crews. Steve does projects and cannot relate well to the public and does not like the sales, and Chris likes the marketing end of the business and needed to hire a project manager. They finally joined up about two months ago, each living in Frederick county in Emmitsburg. I got Chris on the phone and asked how soon he could come by to look over things and talk with me about what I had in mind. He suggested Thursday at 1:30 PM, hardly a convenient time for me, but I did not want to go too much longer without getting started on what I have in mind for remodeling before refinishing and refurnishing the house. And, as you know, I have plans to be gone a lot in the near future--like, today!

I bustled through all I had to do, and mailed out the seventeen packages of reprints and information I had promised my friends and colleagues from the meeting in London/Lille, and then tried to send the narrative to date of the Eurasian adventures along with the Jun-A-2 cover note you have received. Although the computer at my office froze up on the sending of this package, I finally got it thawed in time to send it off before packing out to come home to Derwood, where I was also packing up to leave on this trip---to run a marathon for which I am very poorly prepped --if at all!

Jim, the mail man who likes to come up to the woods and eat his lunch every day is my “day watchman” around the place. He enjoys it very much since he says it must be over 15* cooler in the woods that it is on the rest of the beat, and he knows of no one else who has a property like mine. He was really worried when it seemed like everyone was moving out when the VanderHarts left and took all the furnishings, then I went away for a month. I assured him he was more than welcome to continue to enjoy the woods, and told him I was meeting someone to plan a deck off the rear of the house with some nice amenities which might include a big hot tub. He was there when Chris drove up in a big F-350 Ford V-10 pickup, and he told Chris that this was the prettiest place around. “When I eat my lunch in the quiet cool woods in the birdsong [that I am always audiotaping at dawn and dusk], deer come up and walk around me almost every day.” I told him that I watch that deer herd around the Derwood Deer Woods rather closely myself, but that they should be fawning soon and I had never yet seen the fawns as they are fresh--only many days later when they are already running around after their mothers.

Chris took measurements and talked with me about my ideas for the house with the different options I thought might be possible which he will draw up in several different plans to choose from and modify.

After Chris left at about 3:00 PM I had a series of chores I needed to do to get ready for my trip to Colorado. Besides packing up my runner’s marathon kit, I looked around the yard, since I am not often home during the daylight hours. I picked up a bit of trash, since the neighborhood kids are busy in enjoying the space trolley and tire swing--with my blessing--but gum wrappers and coke cans come along with that. I noticed that the ideal growing conditions of a very wet spring had produced a thicket of grass especially since the early light leaf cover before the woods filled out made for a sunny fast growth. I had hoped to cut the grass before leaving, and had also hoped to get a chance to run one last time before the marathon. It was 90* ---summer had appeared suddenly.

I cranked up the lawn mower, and did the whole of the back yard. As I was roaring along with the noisy mower, I looked to my left and saw a deer about thirty feet away, but there is nothing at all unusual about that. It would be a strange day if I did NOT see deer in Derwood. I continued mowing and the deer did not move away. I had mowed for about an hour an had come up to the terrace around the front door.

When I had gone to the shed to get the mower, a groundhog was standing there, and ran INTO the shed, using the hole in the door conveniently placed for this purpose, I am sure he figured. When I opened the door, he scurried away under some sacks, and I did not disturb him further. I had forgotten about him as I had nearly completed the terrace and was making the last strip along the base of the pine tree where the branches come down to the ground. The rotary blade bit into some of the pine branches making a good resinous smell. As I pushed forward, something jumped. Whatever it was, it was only ten inches in front of the lawn mower, and must have sat there throughout the time the roaring lawn mower was passing ever closer to it over the past hour.

At first, I thought again of the ground hog. Then, disoriented as to where I was and thinking of my most recent wilderness venue, I said--right out loud--”It looks like a snowshoe hare!”

It had jumped up and fallen forward, tripping over the pine boughs. It was almost all white, with a brown back. Then, I abruptly realized what I was seeing! It was a newborn fawn--still wet and glistening with membrane over its back!

I quickly shut off the lawn mower, and the sudden silence was nearly deafening. The fawn struggled to get to its feet, easily within rang for me simply to lean forward and pick it up. I did not, and I let it try to crawl forward unmolested. For a moment, I thought I had hit it with the mower, which is a reasonable possibility with a wet struggling fawn with a few flecks of blood over it. But, I almost immediately knew that I was seeing what I had so long searched for and never found. I was looking at a fawn born within the hour, maybe minutes. I tiptoed back into the house and through the front door retrieved the two cameras I had packed for the trip West. When I cam out the fawn was gone.

I knew it could only go forward as wobbly and weak as it was, not yet on its feet. If it went forward, it would be lying in the ferns under the rhododendrons in front of the kitchen window. I knew it could not go further, since there is the retaining wall all around the front where the azaleas, mountain laurel, and rhododendrons have been so heavily browsed out by the deer, that the whole understory is open and transparent. I knew just where it would be, and knew it could be no other place--so, I tiptoed forward to this small confined space to see the mystery of the newborn fawn blending into its surroundings. I had the cameras ready.

I knew exactly where this very distinctive appearing newborn fawn would have to be, and I could not find it there! I combed back and forth through the leaves and looked under the ferns parting them with my foot. And, I saw nothing at all--no trace, or track, or scraped off membrane or moist trail like that which would follow a slug.

I went back in the house and put the N 8008 on the window ledge, and put the Nikon pocket NTT camera in my pocket. Baffled, I went out and cranked up the mower, and continued on around the driveway, and then went down to the front of the house around the cleared out garden patch. It took me an hour to finish--the whole job was twice as long as the last time I mowed since the grass was thicker. I turned of the mower and pushed it up the long drive making the clattering noise of its rattling along after the very much louder roar of the engine was shut down. I pushed it around the circular drive toward the shed. As I came to the rhododendrons, I looked left, and there stood two deer. One was the doe I had seen earlier. I pulled the Nikon Tele Touch out of my pocket, and because of the exertion and the hot day, the viewfinder was completely covered in sweat. I just held it at arm’s length in pointing it at the two deer, and shot the release. The flash went off and the red reflex from their eyes bounced back at me. The two big deer startled and turned around and bolted. They raised their flags and made not very convincing leaps over the foliage to go down the hill, remarkably slowly for deer that can hurry a lot faster than that if they were really convinced.

The brief flash of red where the white backside should be in a flagging deer was all I saw, too fast for the camera to recharge for a second flash. I turned around and put my hands on the mower to push it forward, and looked left at the retaining wall along the rhododendrons I had combed thorough an hour earlier.

The little fawn looked at me about ten feet away--witty the curious expression I remembered from one of the Children’s Books I had once read to Michael “Are You My Mother?”

In the hour since I had first seen it, it had turned from embryo foetus to a wild animal in its element and already adapted to it. It had been licked dry. It was standing, albeit very wobbly---in essence the first year of a newborn child’s life compressed into an hour in terms of “developmental milestones. I had been a witness at each end of the “Year of the Fawn”--and now it was a woodland creature rather than a laboratory specimen. It was beautiful.

I held the camera out in front of me since I still could not see through the viewfinder, and triggered the flash. The little fawn crouched; it was too late to do the perfectly still and no none will see me bit. It turned and tried to waddle away, I took another picture as it went under the rhododendrons toward the front door of the house. It went around the backside of the tree in front of the door, (it did not instinctively know that there are two sides of the tree and two can play that game--one of the first lessons it learned) and I went around the other side of the tree, so when the little nose twitched around the tree, it was sniffing directly into the camera lens. Now it decided it was time to get out of there. I snapped another frame and the film rewound at the end of my roll of film that had started at the Millennium Meeting of Endocrine Surgeons in Lille France. I stepped into the house and dropped off the NTT and picked up the N8008. I walked back out as the fawn tried to walk around the pine tree where I had first startled it, and it made it to the just mowed grass where I had planned to put the hammock up to day. I was right behind it as it came up to the retaining wall. I had to manually focus the camera since the fawn was too small to have the autofocus zero in on it.

Now, the little deer was standing with this two dimensional spatial problem. The next step was the back yard four feet down over the wall. Something asserted itself in its instinctive DNA-programmed instructions. “I am a deer! I make graceful bounds over fences and fallen trees, tucking the front feet up and propelling with the hind legs like a rabbits’!”

It launched out in a rather good imitation of a graceful leap. It then came down in a ass over teakettle tumbling heap. It lay there with its very white underbelly up and its legs all tangled up and it could not get them around to the underside. I shot a picture of the ungraceful landing, as it struggled to stand up by halves. The front half came around first. It was apparent that it was not hurt, but quite startled that it had not performed all the beginning to end parts of that performance its mother just had. It got up and wobbled down the leaves of the steep hill, slaloming around little trees, as I backed off.

I have now seen my newborn fawn in Derwood. I did not see it when it was lying under the tree, having been born only minutes before. Further, I did not see it when and where I knew it would have to be. It hid from me in plain sight. By the time I had come back after another hour of mowing, it had “matured” to the point that it was already “plantigrade” and it had decided that “Why walk, when I can fly!” But, it learned an early lesson in gravity. I could have picked it up at almost any pint--except when I could not find it--by I did not want to put my scent on it when Mama had done such a job of licking any other scent off from it, and would be more than able to care for it. I will look again when I return from my Colorado trip to see if I can follow at least the age-mates, if not this very same deer, for which I am now a virtual foster parent in the Derwood Deer Woods.]

WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS:
IN A SINGLE DAY I HEAR A PROPOSAL FOR A TV
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SPECIAL,
AND A WRITER FROM THE AAMC REPORTER WANTS A STORY

From having met me in a single engine Caravan making a futile round trip into the iced over conditions of the Arctic Village intended landing for a filming in ANWR last August, Roger Hair, photojournalist for NGS, remembered me and called while I was out running the Steamboat Marathon (see Jun-A-8). Having just talked with him and having forwarded some materials on the medical adventures by email, I returned to find an email message from a Jennifer Potter, a writer for the AAMC (see Jun-A-9). But do not worry; if your name is or was Geelhoed, you will all have a chance to be famous and have a book written about you (see Jun-A-7)

And all of these exciting things happening in al the wild and wonderful parts of the globe, all of them come down to this: there is every bit as much wonder in my own backyard to be appreciated on a run through the Derwood woods on a “morning of the fox” and an “afternoon of the fawn!”

AFTERNOON OF A FAWN 2001 VERSION TO APPEND MY THOUGHTS FROM THE FIRST SIGHTING, 2000

AFTERNOON OF A FAWN
2001 VERSION
TO APPEND MY THOUGHTS FROM THE FIRST SIGHTING, 2000