home range
ursula szmulowicz
A doe visited my backyard last week. White-tailed deer often pass through my property in the suburbs of Cleveland, either alone or in a herd, traveling between the scattered corpses and forests in their home range. But, this time, not only did I see her through the window, but she also saw me.
She was so close that, had there been no glass, I could have reached out to stroke the graceful slope of her neck. But, without the barrier, she would have already fled.
Her black eyes were unblinking under her long, dark lashes. The light brown hair over her forehead descended into creamy white velvet over her muzzle. She pricked her ears as if she had heard my surprised gasp.
What are you doing in there? I imagined her wondering.
Afternoon traffic hummed from the adjacent street. Not wanting to frighten the doe, I held still. But her white tail wasn’t raised—I wasn’t a threat to her. “I live here,” I would have replied, had she asked.
She turned her attention to the birdfeeder behind her, and the birds surrendered their perches. A cardinal took flight in a rush of red, a blue jay in a burst of blue, landing on nearby branches, winter bare. From a safe distance, a house sparrow chattered its displeasure. Seeds tumbled to the muddy ground as the doe feasted, her tongue flicking into a feeding hole. So do I, she would have said.
The doe and the birds and I, we exist in an edgeland of houses and roads, of streams and trees. I’ve seen moles and rabbits and red fox here, timid and tentative, scurrying about. Wildlife persists despite the human constructions that crowd out and fragment their habitats.
On this cold, winter morning, I dress in layers to run outside. Snow fell overnight. Only a single set of double-toed hoofprints interrupt the pristine sheet of white, crossing from the road and onto the sidewalk. The ice crystals crunch under my weight, and I add the tread of my running shoes alongside the blazed trail. Soon, the deer tracks veer onto the neighboring lawn where society says I cannot go.
My exhaled breaths become vapor. With every inhalation, the cold air bites at my airways. The trees towering over me are draped in white. I begin to run the one mile to the local park. The deer live there, too, among the thickets of trees around the small lake. Shades of woodland brown camouflage the large mammals, concealing them in plain view.
A car horn sounds from a distance. The driver stops, and a deer ambles across the road, followed by another. When traversing the interstitial spaces between their habitats, the deer are vulnerable. Motor vehicles are deadlier than their natural predators. Carcasses of struck deer litter roads. I pause in my run, relaxing only when both arrive safely on the other side.
It was enough to have seen one deer die.
One afternoon in late September, I found a doe resting in the shade of my butterfly bushes. The neatly-mowed green grass was crushed under her trunk Her head swiveled to take in her surroundings but missed me, peering through my living-room window, partially hidden by a drawn curtain. I began to withdraw but stopped.
Deer frequently sheltered in my yard during the warm-weather months. But, with this doe, something was wrong.
I pressed my forehead against the glass. There was an abrasion on her flank, I noticed. And her legs weren’t properly tucked against her body. From inside my house, I couldn’t see more than that.
The doe scrambled to stand up when I approached her from the garage, and I saw the bone, a bloodied white, jutting out of the skin. Her rear leg was broken. An open fracture, abhorrent to behold. Her mouth widened to cry out a single, silent bleat of pain. She fell to the ground and struggled to again get up. To escape a danger: me.
“No, no, no.” I rapidly backed away from her, my hands up in the air. Don’t get up. Don’t do it. I didn’t want her to hurt herself even worse.
She settled down on the grass, her broken leg extended behind her.
“There’s nothing to do for it,” the city official told me when I called.
“No euthanasia?” I asked between my sobs. I didn’t expect a surgical intervention, just a speedier death. “She was hit by a car, I think.”
“Either it’ll get up and go, or it’ll die.” The official gave me a phone number for the service department. “Call them to pick up the body afterward.”
She wasn’t going to get up and go. An open fracture wouldn’t mend. And, judging from the wound on her flank, the doe likely had internal injuries that wouldn’t heal.
The sun set that day at 7:17 p.m. From my living room, I watched her chest rise and fall with each breath until the inky night obscured her form. My flashlight couldn’t pierce the darkness. At my last sight of her, she was growing lethargic, her head more still.
Death would come with or without me as a witness. An animal in the wild dies alone. But, despite her broken leg, she had dragged herself from the street, over a mulched and manicured landscape, and onto my yard. Though the doe wouldn’t know or understand, I felt obligated to sit with her while I could.
I lived here, but, until that night, so had she. My home was her home range.
END
I am a colon and rectal surgeon, currently not in active practice, living in Northeast Ohio. In addition to an MD, I have undergraduate degrees in English Literature, French Language and Literature, and Biology. This would be my first non-fiction publication (other than my surgical writing). My fiction has appeared in The Examined Life Journal, Coffin Bell, and Please See Me. I participated in the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop in Fiction in 2018 and 2019.