Unit 6: This is Jody’s Fawn

Jody tries his best not to scare the fawn away. First, he stroked its neck slowly and wrapped his hands around it. He then picked up the little fawn and walked through the thick bushes of the forest. He tried to protect its face from the sharp vines. When Jody became tired, he stopped by on his way home and took some rest. Suddenly he remembered his father once said that a fawn follows if it had first been carried. He gently put the fawn down for some time and it initially refused to follow. Jody took it to his arms and put it down and gradually noticed that it had started to follow him. When they finally reached home, the fawn was unable to climb the stairs. Seeing this, Jody picked up the little deer in his arms and took it inside his house.

Jody’s mind was filled with emotion when he saw the fawn. When he gently stroked the neck of the little deer, the touch made him ‘delirious’. When Jody realised that the fawn looked up to him, he was ‘light-headed with his joy’ and wanted to fondle, run and romp with it. Finally, when he brought the little deer to his home, it seemed to Penny that ‘the boy’s eyes were as bright as the fawn’s.’

Jody poured milk into a small gourd and kept it in front of the fawn. It butted it suddenly, smelling the milk, but could make nothing of the milk in the gourd. Jody saved it precariously from spilling over the floor. Then the deer slowly started drinking milk from Jody’s hands when he dipped his fingers in the milk and thrust them into the fawn’s soft wet mouth.

As the fawn is a wild animal, it is not aware of how to climb the stairs in a house. Hence, when it reached Jody’s home, it failed to follow him up the staircase or even drink the milk offered in the gourd. It simply didn’t know how to react in such an unfamiliar situation.