Lisa had been surprised at how hard fawns could suckle at a bottle. Their needy yanks moved their necks like swans. She loved watching the look on their faces as the glugs of warm formula went down their throats, stray drops beading on their muzzles. This first-thing-in-the-morning task at the wildlife rescue Lisa had been volunteering at since spring began made it all feel worth it. She tiptoed out of the house well before sunrise, weaving a path across the worn floors to avoid the creaky spots, heart in her throat with anxiety at the possibility of disturbing her boyfriend, whose shifts at Stewart’s sometimes ended at midnight. He treasured his sleep. Billy didn’t understand this thing with animals, why it was worth Lisa getting up early to drive back roads out of Catskill Park and toward the Hudson River to go to the rescue, only to come back to shower the deer snot and baby bird shit off of her before finally going to her call center job. When she was growing up in these woods, she’d nursed many baby squirrels to adulthood, which she only recently learned was a very difficult thing to do. She’d wanted to be a vet, but didn’t have the grades for it, then set her sight on being a vet tech and didn’t have the money for her associates degree.

For Lisa, there was something about the mix of urgency and routine of it, knowing that these creatures would die without the rescue. She loved how utterly mundane it was to feed and clean up poop, and the need the animals had for these things to happen on a strict schedule. Showing up to care for these creatures was the most grounding part of her days.

The goal with any rescue, whether an orphaned baby animal or an injured or poisoned adult, was to not get them too familiar with, too grateful, to people. If they didn’t imprint too deeply, they could be released back into the wild where wild animals belong. And then hopefully they would shun humans and stay safe from them until whatever point the creature would meet their natural end. Lisa liked that she and the other volunteers showed up every day to care intimately for animals who would hopefully not recognize them again while out in the world.

After Lisa finished up the morning fawn bottle feeding, she carefully squeezed out of the paddock, leaving the deer behind. The smallest fawns curled into tight balls to sleep in the longer grass, while the older ones bounded off together, flashing the white underneath their tails as they went. She collected the empty baby bottles from the spots where she dropped them as each deer finished feeding, pushed them in a wheelbarrow across the gravel toward the trailer where the baby birds were kept. Carol, a more senior volunteer who was often entrusted with complex cases and dealing with people who found injured wildlife, was obsessed with the birds and did the morning feeding shift. The baby birds needed to be fed every hour, so by the time Carol was done with one round it was about time to start the next. She used coffee stirrers to dip into a room temperature mix of canned dog and cat food. It smelled gross but Lisa watched with awe as Carol waved her hand over the resting babies with their thin skin stretched taut over their creepy eyeballs, and the creatures opened their beaks, peeping and begging until she shoved the lumpy brown food into their gullets. Carol particularly delighted in feeding the birds chicken-flavored food, which she claimed they liked best.

Carol took one look at Lisa and intoned, “Girrrrlll.” She lifted her eyebrow. “What is going on with that man of yours?” Carol was at least fifteen years older than Lisa’s twenty, and in her own words, had seen some shit. She read Lisa like a book — or anyway, like a wounded animal that couldn’t talk about what had gotten it so banged up. Lisa had swept her overly long bangs over her left eye, which was caked with foundation a shade too light. Even if it wasn’t the wrong shade, the makeup still wouldn’t have done much to cover it..

Most people averted their eyes or pointedly pretended not to see when they noticed the tell-tale signs on Lisa’s face and body, but Carol always asked her directly about her bruises and chided her for staying with her boyfriend. “Looks like you took a hell of a punch,” Carol commented.

Lisa cringed at the boldness of the statement, then responded evenly, “I fell.”

“Sure honey, and pigs fly.” Carol was not taking bullshit.

As uncomfortable as these moments with Carol were, there was something about being seen in this way that was comforting to Lisa. Though Lisa hadn’t gotten the full story out of Carol, the woman knew what she was talking about and had once upon a time sported similar bruises.

“I just want you to be okay,” Carol said tenderly. The older woman’s mouth curved her whole sun-baked face into an expression between a sympathetic grin and a pained grimace. She sounded resigned as she offered, “But I know no one can tell you boo if you aren’t ready to go.”

“We have a new fawn intake coming in later this morning, want to help get her situated?” Carol asked, steering away from the difficult subject. Lisa looked at her watch and knew she couldn’t both go to her job and be here to help with the fawn. But she couldn’t say no to the fawn, had never seen one freshly delivered to the rescue. She nodded yes, and then asked, “Can I use your phone to call in sick to work and to tell Billy?” Lisa didn’t have a cell phone. Billy said it was too expensive, but she suspected that he wanted to limit her communication options.

“Atta girl,” Carol laugh-coughed. “Ditch your job for a life of heartbreak and vet bills.”

+

About an hour later a family, mom and dad and girl no older than ten, rolled up in a dark blue, dinged minivan. Carol and Lisa walked out to meet them. The little girl sat in the back seat with an expression of awe and terror on her face as she regarded the fawn swaddled on the floor of the minivan. The fawn was wrapped up in several beach towels — for warmth? To immobilize her? To staunch blood flow on a wound? They’d be finding out very soon.

“Well, what do we have here?” Carol said as a greeting, after the man slid the van door open with a roar. “Can you tell me about how you found this little critter?”

The woman, obviously frazzled and concerned about the deer, narrated the tale. “Our daughter Margaret and our dog were out on a morning walk in the field behind our house. And the dog found the deer. She was all curled up in a tight little ball and they surprised each other, the dog got super excited and tried to…. Well, not eat her exactly, but he sure slobbered on her. And then Maggie petted the little deer, who seemed so stunned and alone. She came running back to the house to tell us about the orphaned deer and at first we thought it was her imagination, but she insisted. We followed her back out there, and the poor thing was shivering, covered in dog drool. And — it was so small and alone! The mother must have died on the road or been shot, and I know that once a person touches a baby animal their kind rejects it. So we scooped her up, and here we are.”

Margaret listened intently, while softly petting the blanket in the vicinity of the fawn.

Carol nodded and looked even more grim than usual. “Well, we’ll take a look to see if the babe is injured. But I have to tell you — if they’re too little to keep up with momma, she finds a hiding spot for them while she goes out and eats so she can make milk for the little one. They look small and alone, but they can’t be sniffed out so they’re pretty safe. Unless you know for sure the mom is dead or gone, this baby probably isn’t actually an orphan. And that thing about them getting rejected if they smell like people is hooey. It takes more than that for a momma to give up on her kiddo.”

Lisa had, until this moment, accepted that all the deer under her care were orphaned. She had imagined stilt-legged fawns bleating by their road-killed mothers’ side, their wet noses quivering while the blood pooled on the asphalt. But Carol’s attempt to educate this family spun her out a bit. She wondered, how many of the fawns that she fed every day had been forcibly separated from a mother whose care just looked different from human mothering?

Carol gently scooped up the swaddled fawn and carried her into the intake area, a garage that had been modified with stainless steel tables, large and small scales, a deep sink, and many racks full of supplies. Lisa and the family followed her. Carol placed the fawn bundle on a table and asked Lisa to step up and hold the fawn still for the exam. The two women unwrapped the fawn and got her standing on the table. Lisa cradled her with one arm around her chest and one arm around her rear. She was tiny and bewildered.

“Oh wow, she’s a fresh one,” Carol exclaimed. The fawn was so tiny she was likely only a few days old. “I bet she’s plugged up, too.” Carol’s eyes met Lisa’s to ask if she was good, and then Carol stepped away to a shelf of supplies, gathering a wad of paper towels and a package of baby wipes. As she moved back toward the fawn, she explained, “Baby deer have no scent so they can’t be detected by predators — your dog wouldn’t have been able to sniff her out, Margaret just got lucky to stumble across her. But their poop has a scent and could bring predators to them, so the baby can’t poop on her own. When her mom comes to feed and check on her, she’ll also help her poop and then eat the evidence.”

“Ewwwww,” Margaret commented.

Carol pulled out some baby wipes and used her hand to mimic the movement of a mother deer licking her baby’s butt, and the constipated fawn immediately pooped little round pellets into Carol’s wipe. “Lisa, I’ll hold on to her for a minute and check for wounds — can you go warm up a bottle of formula? I’m sure she’s hungry.”

+

Since the family was so familiar with the field and the exact spot Margaret found the fawn, Carol decided that their best move was to return the fawn to her spot and to her mother, instead of making her an orphan by rescue. She had another round of baby bird feeding to do, so she tasked Lisa with following the family home and putting the deer back where they found her.

As their little caravan pulled into the driveway, Lisa could see that in the back field, a doe was anxiously pacing the treeline. She knew right away that this had to be the babe’s mother looking for her misplaced offspring. The family decamped from their minivan and Margaret led them all out to the spot where she’d found the baby. There was a small, neat, round impression in the grass, with bent and broken stalks all around where Margaret and the dog had traipsed into the fawn’s sanctuary. Lisa bent down with the fawn still wrapped in the family’s beach towels, and deposited her into the impression. The fawn looked surprised for half a second but then settled right in, curled into a ball and tucked her nose underneath her tail.

The four humans trekked back to the house, and then posted up on the back porch to observe and see if a reunion was to come. Sure enough, the doe that Lisa had spotted pacing the treeline began to make her way across the field. Her plaintive mewing for her child tugged at Lisa’s heart. Eventually, she discovered that her baby was there, in that little nest. They could see the doe licking her baby all over, nuzzling her to stand and encouraging her to nurse. As the baby tugged at the doe’s udders, the mother looked around, with ears reception dishes and eyes round dark planets, surveying the land and perhaps pondering what had happened.

+

Lisa smelled like animal funk when she walked through the door that evening to her and Billy’s small house. Though she’d made a morning sick call to work as well as a call to Billy to let him know she would be at the rescue all day, Billy was frosty and suspicious. He had, however, gone out and bought them a rotisserie chicken for dinner. That gesture boded somewhat well. Lisa had become accustomed to reading into every gesture, look, breath, and footstep Billy made. She tuned into his moods in order to predict his moves, to know when she might need to steer clear or start apologizing for something or nothing. She tried to make herself seem small and dependent, pliable and docile, so that she could render herself harmless, so she would not ruffle Billy’s feathers. Last night, when she had made one of Billy’s favorite dinners (plain chicken cutlets and mashed potatoes, nothing green on the plate), Billy had lashed out at her when she petted their cat, accused her of being more affectionate toward the cat than toward him. She was beginning to suspect that maybe it didn’t matter what she did; Billy’s moods were his alone.

“You smell disgusting,” Billy commented. “I’m not eating with you until you shower.”

“Yes, of course, babe,” Lisa replied out loud, a lilting softness in her voice. She was surprised to hear her inner voice intone with bitterness, Well, hello to you too.

+

Lisa took a longer than usual shower, savoring the hot water, following the shampoo bottle’s instructions to rinse and repeat. As she walked back down the hall toward the eat-in-kitchen, she saw blue and red lights, that unmistakable loop, reflecting off the sallow off-white walls of the living room. A pair of cops stood in the living room, hands at their hips. Billy sat on the couch, looking irritated. The cat had made himself scarce.

The taller cop said, “Someone in the neighborhood called 911 to report a woman screaming bloody murder, so we’re going around doing wellness checks. Is everything okay here?”

Lisa’s hands moved to her wet hair, combing her bangs over her bruised eye, then floating down to squeeze the drippy ends. She did not look at Billy. “Oh yes, everything is fine here. We were just about to have dinner.”

They all startled as they heard a shriek — a bizarre and hair-raising combination of a bloodcurdling scream of fright and a raspy moan of extreme pain. All three men looked stricken as Lisa began to laugh.

“That’s a fox!” She exclaimed. “It’s a vixen — that’s the sound they make when they’re in heat; she’s calling for a mate.” The four of them stood and listened to another few rounds of the animal’s calls. The location of the sound varied; she was definitely on the move and looking for love.

The cop who had not yet spoken said, “I thought foxes lived deep in the forest.”

“More and more, they’re in the mix and nearby people. They’re more like raccoons than wolves. And they are very talkative — they have a lot of feelings.”

“You sure know a lot about foxes,” the first cop remarked.

“Yeah, I volunteer at a wildlife rescue and we get all kinds of animals there,” Lisa replied.

The cops sat in their car in front of the house for a while. The flashing lights were off now. They were radio-ing headquarters to explain their findings, and then finally drove off.

Billy and Lisa picked silently at the cold chicken. It was a confusing blur, what led them to argue. Or really, what led Billy into shouting while Lisa apologized, as she simultaneously tried to suck her stomach, her entire set of organs, in — to make herself smaller, make her body not need and not react. Lisa couldn’t handle two nights in a row of this. Her body hurt, her mind felt frayed, her skin felt jumpy, she knew that Billy shouldn’t be yelling at her but thought it was possible that she’d been selfish with the way she spent her day, that she had instigated in some way. It was hard to hear her internal thoughts over his very loud external voice. She had a glimmer of an idea, to take their mess outside, into the wild, instead of keeping this conflict contained inside the walls of their house. If that fawn, that fox, who were not in trouble at all, could summon concern and rescue, perhaps her human voice outside in the night would as well.

+

None of the lights in their neighbors’ houses flicked on. Time passed. Lisa stood outside in her socks, feeling the moisture on the evening grass dampening her feet as Billy’s enraged form blurred in her vision and she held back hot tears.

+ + +