Nothing real noteworthy going on in the construction projects this past week, at least nothing that would be interesting to see pictures of…. just plugging away on the couple of project we have going on…

Last weekend something interesting happened here at home. I was heading out to the shop and my son, Jonathan, comes in from his jog. He had come up the trail through the woods and, behind him, this spotted fawn:

It just hopped up on the deck, though it seemed to be very young and not able to walk well.
We didn’t really know what to do, nothing like this had ever happened before and, for a moment, I wondered if we were going to be adopting a deer…

Jonathan said he saw the mother in the woods and she was calling to him, but the fawn just decided to follow him instead.

I couldn’t get the animal to go back into the woods myself, it seemed to have little interest in me, (I have such a way with animals), but when Jonathan came out, it seemed to take a liking to him again, (he is a gentile spirit and has always seemed to attract the attention of animals), so he and my other son Patrick, led the fawn back down the trail into the woods to where they thought the mother might still be and sort of ditched it there…

We kept the dogs inside for the rest of the day, but I really didn’t have much hope. I figured in a day or two they would be dragging home the carcass of a lifeless baby deer, however that day and the next few went by with no more sign of the deer.

On Thursday morning, an entirely different event occurred. We found our cat, Milly, sprawled on the floor crying loudly and unable to move. She had been acting odd the past couple weeks and even seemed to be having some seizures, we hadn’t been sure what to think and now, here she was. Patrick carried her to the truck and we set off for the Vet Clinic. It was somewhat traumatic and I’m sure we both were thinking the worst, though the cat was only 5 years old.

So there we are heading out with this seemingly paralyzed cat. We got to the curve down the hill and here is the little fawn, alive as can be, running down the road and then ducking into the woods.  I didn’t really even remember this happening till later in the day. It’s always struck me as odd how events like this coincide. I figured the deer wouldn’t have survived this long unless it had been reunited with its mother so we were somewhat comforted that the fawn would be OK.

Milly, however, was not.

I would like so say here that, though I haven’t been to a lot of vet clinics in my life, I would doubt if there are many where you would have the head veterinarian, the owner of the business, with everything that is going on in that place at any given time, close the door in the cat room and sit himself down on the floor with my wife and I while she held the cat, for probably 20 minutes, just to talk through things…
If anyone has ever been to the Ely Vet Clinic, they know what I mean. Dr. Chip Hansen runs a great place there.

…so here is remembering Milly:

…and here are some more pictures of the deer:

The same day we lost Milly, the Ely high school baseball team beat Deer River at the section championship game in Hibbing to advance to the State tournament in Chaska next week…
…so, an interesting week for us here in woods…