The photo of this fawn tells one story, and the photos of folks trudging through the woods at dusk tells a second story.
This fawn came to Wildwoods needing support after having been abandoned by its mother. We attempted reunification to no avail. This fawn was very hungry, having gone at least 24 hours without food and she greedily responded to our hydration and re-feeding process. We have had many such stories of success this year, but we also expend a lot of energy hoping for a better outcome which doesn’t always happen. The story I am about to share is one that does not have a happy ending, but does offer a glimpse of the ends we go to in order to do the best job that we can.
Recently, a railroad engineer called us for support. When he was doing his regular rail run north of Twig, MN, he saw a moose calf stuck in the mud near the railroad tracks. Perhaps naively, Wildwoods, the wildlife biologist from the Fond du Lac band, and the train engineer set out in the late evening to find and rescue this calf. This was a group of folks that understand the reality that wildlife face and, very sadly, we each see animal deaths almost every day in our various places of work. But for some reason, we thought that we really were going to find and rescue a moose calf that was stuck in the mud.
It took a while to find the correct spot, park the vehicles, and tromp though marsh and blow downs, and then hike the railroad tracks. As anyone in northern Minnesota knows right now, the streams have been running high, so we had to go out of our way to find places to cross, and the mud was spectacular (getting stuck thigh-deep spectacular, in fact).
By the time we arrived at the spot where the moose was, it was dark, and we could just barely see his outline. As soon as the calf saw us approach, it started to cry. It had been alone at this point for hours, and was half-submerged in water, not mud. This is when we realized that we weren’t actually going to rescue a moose calf that was stuck in the mud, but we were instead looking at a suffering animal that had been hit by a train hours ago. The calf could use its front half, but was paralyzed in the back legs. The only thing that we could do at this point was to relieve the animal’s suffering and place its body deeper into the woods so that it could return to nature.
The hike back to the vehicles was marked by slumped shoulders and slower steps. It took us twice as long to maneuver through the streams, marshes, and blowdowns in the dark, making for a very late night. The three of us are in no way naïve as to nature or humanity’s impact on nature, and we have all seen more animal deaths than we can count. How was it, I wondered, that we all believed that this would be a moose calf rescue and ignored the overwhelming evidence that we were likely trudging towards yet one more animal that was about to die because of human development through natural areas? I still don’t have the answer to that question except to think that in such difficult times, perhaps we were holding out hope that things will get better.
At Wildwoods, our efforts are directed to animals that are suffering due to a human intervention, not death at the hands of a natural predator. In this case, the moose calf merited all of our efforts. While we cannot do this for every animal in distress due to lack of resources and personnel, we will do it whenever we can. Please help to support us so that we can continue to be there for our community.
