August 31,  2009




It’s a sweltering Friday afternoon in August, and Becky Marlin is winding her way down a reed-lined path, followed by her pet goats, Pearl and Coco, carrying two five-gallon buckets full of grapevine, oak, honeysuckle, and willow clippings.
 
When she reaches a fenced closure behind her house, deep in the Frisco woods, she opens the gate, steps inside, dumps out the clippings, and waits as five small baby deer slowly come into view.

Marlin is one of the few licensed fawn rehabilitators in the state, and one of just three in eastern North Carolina.

She became a licensed rehabilitator earlier this year, spurred on by a difficult experience with a fawn in need of care.
 
After that, she decided that she was going to learn how to care for fawns and become a legally operating rehabber herself.

Already licensed to rehabilitate small mammals—rabbits, opossums, squirrels and the like—Marlin went to Raleigh, took a short course offered by the Wildlife Rehabilitators of North Carolina on fawn rehabilitation, applied for the necessary permit (completely separate from the small mammals permit she already held), and began taking fawns this past spring.

The first fawn that she took in had sustained severe injuries and was in too bad a shape to make it through rehabilitation.

Then, on Memorial Day, Zoe arrived.

“She wasn’t in bad shape,” Marlin said of Zoe. “She’d probably just been abandoned and would have been fine.”

She explained that fawns are born without a scent. This adaptation keeps them safe from predators, which allows the mother to leave them while she gathers food.  A mother can have up to three fawns, and this process continues until they’re old enough to gather food for themselves.

“People mistake them for being abandoned, when really they should just be left alone,” she says, adding that the only time they should be disturbed is if you hear them whining or crying, in which case, you should call a rehabber immediately.

After Zoe, Marlin took in four more fawns -- Chapel on June 14, Maggie and Jethro on June 16, and finally, Kate, the youngest, on July 20. 

Taking care of the fawns is a huge commitment. It requires lots of time, money, and effort.

In addition to their diet of assorted shrubbery and vines, the fawns are bottle fed a special replacement formula up to three times a day.

And when it comes to their health, there are lots of challenges—vet visits, medications, and special treatment—and lots of bills.

Like Zoe, some of the fawns that come to her have been kidnapped, but most of the time, they come injured, usually with bites from foxes, coyotes, or dogs.

Maggie, for example, came in with a nasty bite and infection behind her ear.  She was actually given the name Maggie because of the maggots in the wound—and then the infection spread to her lymph nodes. 

After Marlin had taken her to a vet in Nags Head and had the infection taken care of, Maggie and Kate both got a fungal skin infection.

Marlin had been treating the infection with over-the-counter antifungal creams.

“I was using Monistat on them,” she said with a laugh.

But the infection was stubborn, and Maggie had to be carted off to the vet to get cultures run. She came home with an anti-bacterial shot and a topical ointment containing a much higher concentration of the anti-fungal medication than Marlin could get at the store.

Situations like that are tricky, because while it’s necessary to take the fawns to the vet, they also need as little human interaction as possible in order to survive when reintroduced into the wild.

“You don’t want them to get too acclimated to humans,” Marlin said, adding that she and her husband, Richard, are talking about installing a Web-cam on the pen so that people can see the little deer without threatening their ability to survive when released, which she has said she plans to do this fall.

Marlin is also holding a raffle to raise money to support the project. In addition to the five fawns, Marlin just received a shipment of baby squirrels—eyes still closed—whose treetop home in Kitty Hawk had been cut down.
 
Raffle tickets will be sold for $1 apiece, or you can buy 11 for $10.

Twenty-five prizes will be given away, including a three-night stay at Hatteras Landing Resort, two nights at the Seaside Inn, a hang gliding lesson from Kitty Hawk Kites, gift certificates from several local restaurants, including the Breakwater, Sonny’s, and the Hatterasman, and much more.

The drawing will be held at the community center in Hatteras village, on Saturday, Sept. 5. You need not be present to win, and all proceeds will go to benefit Marlin’s work.

For information on where to buy tickets, please contact Becky at (252) 996-0168.  Donations to support her work can be sent to her at P.O. Box 324, Buxton, NC, 27920.

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