A man who rescued an injured fawn from the wild and nursed it back to health before releasing her back to her mother captured the entire emotional journey on camera.
The man, who has only been identified as Darius, uploaded the footage, which is believed to have been filmed near Yellowstone National Park, on to YouTube.
The animal lover noticed the fawn was injured because she was getting left behind by her mother and sibling last spring.
Though Darius doesn’t support keeping wild animals as pets, he decided to oversee the baby’s rehabilitation.
A man named Darius, who is believed to live near Yellowstone National Park, rehabilitated a fawn last spring
He brought the deer, who he didn’t name in hopes of staying unattached, into his house, and made her a splint out of a cardboard oatmeal box.
‘She was very hungry and had no problem with any of my pets. [For the] first week, she slept by my bed on my shirt, and the shirt became very important to her,’ Darius told The Dodo. ‘She had to have it to be able to sleep.
‘I had to do some Internet search and reading to be able to understand how to [raise] a fawn … get up at night to feed her every four hours, and clean her after,’ Darius said.
Darius said that his one-year-old Bernese mountain dog named Mack helped care for the fawn.
He decided to help when he saw the fawn limping while trying to keep up with her mother and sibling while walking across a field
Darius said he doesn’t believe in keeping wild animals as pets, but after the fawn’s family abandoned her, he decided to step in and help
Darius made the fawn a splint out of a cardboard oatmeal box in hopes of healing her leg. The rehabilitation process took approximately two weeks
After two weeks with the fawn, he found her family and returned her to the wild. The fawn, however, was reluctant to leave Darius’s side.
‘Since day one I was hoping to release baby deer back to the wild,’ he told The Dodo. ‘I really hoped that she did not get attached to me too much, because that would make it very hard to survive in the wild.’
But Darius let the fawn go, and has seen her and the family several times in the wild in the months since the release.
‘[I’ve] seen [the family] many times after release, also seen them recently in the fall,’ he told The Dodo. ‘The mother deer usually does not go too far from the place where she feels safe, so she stays around the area.’
Darius did not name the fawn, in hopes of not getting attached, but still made her a bed to sleep in her first night in his home
Darius’s several other pets seemed to welcome the fawn into the family. His one-year-old Bernese mountain dog named Mack helped care for her
Months after released the fawn back to her family in the wild, Darius spotted the deer again and noticed how much they had grown in just a few months