Jun 24, 2010 By Christine Haines 4 min read

The welcome mat is always out at Ed and Nancy Micher’s home in South Union Township and, on occasion, it’s even occupied. The couple was surprised recently to find a young fawn curled up on the front deck of their Brownfield Lane home.

“I just happened to look out the door and there he was, laying on the mat,” Nancy Micher said of the young deer. “Now we look for him every time we walk past, hoping to see him again.”

The fawn first showed up on June 12 around 11 a.m. It showed up again, Micher said, two days later and for the last time last Wednesday making his appearance in the late afternoon the second and third times.

“We contacted the Game Commission and they said not to make contact or let him get used to us,” Micher said.

With a split-entry house, it was easy to look out for the deer without it being aware of them.

“He didn’t seem to mind Ed taking pictures of him,” Micher said. “Most of the time he was looking in the door.”

Micher said that living across from a wooded area with a creek running through it, she and her husband are used to seeing groundhogs, squirrels, chipmunks and ducks.

“We’ve had deer walk through the yard on occasion, but never any fawns, and never up on the porches,” Micher said.

The couple has lived on Brownfield Lane since 1976 and this is the first time any wild animal has shown up on the welcome mat.

“It was better than a big black bear,” Micher said.

Micher said she and her husband expected to see the fawn again last Friday, but it didn’t show up and hasn’t been back since.

Tom Fazi, an education and information supervisor for the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s Southwest Region, said reports of abandoned fawns are common from mid-May through the end of June, but usually there is no need for human intervention.

“Wildlife does not abandon healthy babies,” Frazi said.

Frazi said fawns are camouflaged by their spots and will lie still, waiting for their mothers. People will find them lying beside trails in the woods or in their yards, or in the Micher’s case, even on the welcome mat.

“Absolutely do not pick them up. Leave them alone,” Frazi said. “It is perfectly natural and normal for them to be alone several hours a day while the mother is feeding.”

Frazi said the repeated pattern of showing up on the Micher’s front deck every other day for nearly a week is a bit unusual, as was the fawn’s choice of bedding.

“Usually they aren’t that regular. I’m at a loss to explain that one,” Frazi said.

Frazi said people who spot fawns near their homes should not assume the animal is abandoned or orphaned unless it has stayed in the same location for more than 24 hours. Frazi said that when danger is present, the mother deer instinctively runs, drawing the danger away from her offspring.

“The fawn knows instinctively to lay down and wait. The spots help camouflage it and a fawn has almost no scent, so a dog or a coyote won’t smell it,” Frazi said.

Frazi said that if a fawn does stay in the same place for more than a day, it may be orphaned and the Game Commission should be contacted. Fawns this early in the summer are too young to survive on their own and a healthy orphaned animal would be taken to a center for rehabilitation and release into the wild.

By late summer, the fawns are able to fend for themselves, Frazi said.

Given the relatively short stays of the fawn on the Micher’s welcome mat, lasting 15 to 45 minutes each time, Frazi speculated that the young animal was simply waiting for its mother and joined her in the woods across the street when the mother was ready to move on.

“He always goes through the driveway and across the road and over the creek and up the hillside,” Micher said.

“He’s welcome here any time.”