The Tales Of Thor The Deer: Abandoned, Rescued, Rehabilitated

COMMENTARY

"Did anyone else see the lady driving in The Dalles, with her flashers on and a fawn in her front seat, yesterday afternoon? I've been so curious how she got a fawn in her car and if it's OK."

That posting on social media came soon after someone saw Dawn Rasmussen driving her blue Subaru Outback through central Oregon. While a Subaru in central Oregon is not an unusual sight, one with an almost-3-month-old deer in the passenger seat is.

While the idea had not been Rasmussen's first choice, circumstance dictated the response.

"The fire was moving toward the house," she says from her home after the Mosier Creek Fire, which burned hundreds of acres, had retreated. "There was no choice. He's too young to fully take care of himself even without a fire. With a fire marching toward the property, I just could not leave him there."

It was May 20, a couple of months into quarantine life, when Thor entered the life of Dawn and her husband.

"Brad had been walking around when he heard a bleating," Dawn says. "It was like a sheep but a much higher pitch. Pretty soon, a small baby deer was at his feet, following him around.

"I went out and saw what was happening and thought, 'OK. This is not good.'"

Dawn's not new to wildlife.

"We have a lot of critters," she says about her property. She works as a responder for the Rowena Wildlife Clinic in nearby Hood River. "I knew this baby deer was in trouble, had probably been abandoned by its mother."

A trip to Rowena to have him checked out confirmed that was the likely scenario.

"They quickly figured out he was very, very, very hungry, that he was dehydrated and that he had messed himself," Dawn says. The last part was another clear sign that he'd been left, since mother deer usually clean their babies until they know how to do it themselves.

"As the vet was cleaning him, making sure that I was paying attention, I realized that he was coming home with me. 'This isn't good,' I thought."

Turns out, it was. Especially for Thor.

First, a little bit about the name. Dawn has a friend with a child on the autism spectrum. A fan of Marvel superhero movies, he came up with the name, and using the name has given him a series of stories that were easier to connect with for him. So, win there.

Second, the name lent itself quite well for a series of posts on Facebook that Dawn writes — Daily Thorapy Update. It's usually picture and a caption that can run anywhere from a sentence or two to a few paragraphs.

"The other day, Thor learned about his shadow," she wrote the other day under a picture of Thor looking at his shadow. "It was so curious to watch him watching his shadow. He would move, and then he would watch his shadow move. Did this for about five minutes.

"I had no idea that deer had that kind of awareness."

When they evacuated, they stayed at the home of a friend, setting up camp briefly in the garage. Thor also met some young goats. Under a picture of that, Dawn wrote:

"Thor met some new kids ... he didn’t know what to do and stood in the pen motionless for 30 mins straight as they all made a fuss about his arrival. The goats were very curious when that other weird goat showed up."

After they returned home from their second fire-forced evacuation in just a few days, she posted a picture of Thor standing next to the car, seemingly aware that there might be another ride in his future.

"We just got home," Dawn wrote. "Thor doesn't know quite what to do."

You might think that the same could said of Dawn. Back in May, while we were all pretty much settled in to Quarantine Life, Dawn was envisioning a summer of hiking day trips.

"Staying at home, raising a deer, it's not what I had envisioned," she says.

She has learned about feeding Thor from a bottle. That's gone from every four hours to twice a day and, she hopes, by next month, to be done weaning him. She has learned about helping him learn to forage, something that he does more every day.

One of the reasons that Dawn has worked to keep her job as a deer mother under wraps is that she wants people to be clear that while she's named him, he is a wild animal and not a pet. She's been working with wildlife experts to rehabilitate him, get him ready to return to the wild.

"Deer are not pets, and people should not think of them that way," she says. "If someone sees a deer in distress, they should reach out for an expert, a wildlife official. At the same time, of course, I have grown attached to him.

"When he's off wandering, I worry about what might happen. I worried that he wouldn't get along with the other deer in his herd."

Dawn says that she's seen Thor hanging out with other deer — she's posted pictures, of course. And even though he wanders farther afield, he does return for a feeding.

"I originally though by July 20, he could be weaned," she says. "That proved to be optimistic, but we're getting there. Now looking to make it happen next month some time.

"It's going to be hard. He'll always be welcome to come by for a visit. He'll just have to get his food elsewhere."

One thing that is particularly hard is that once Thor is really out in the wild, as a deer, he will most definitely not be an alpha predator.

"I know that there's a certain amount of unknown about what could happen down the road," she says. "That's part of life.

"What I do know, for sure, is that over the past three months, I've done everything I can to help a life. And that's rewarding."