BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – With summer well underway, it’s the best time to get outside and do some yard work. However, there may be some little friends that you may not even see.
While out doing yard work, it’s important to be aware of bunnies and fawns, or baby deer. If you see a bunny nest, here’s what you should do.
“Usually you don’t tear up the whole nest. Usually you just kind of rip the top of it off, touch them as little as possible, put the grass back over it. I always tell people make a spiral of yarn or thread or something like that so if it’s been disturbed or not, if mom comes back,” Lori Dawson with Wild for Life says.
One problem Lori says she faces is that some of the bunnies she takes care of are just too big. So how does she measure them?
“I always tell people, if you take a dollar bill and you fold it in half, if the baby bunny sticks out on either side of that dollar bill, they’re on their own. That’s pretty tiny. Everybody thinks ‘Oh, they’re still babies, they’re still with the mom’ but they’re not. They’re totally on their own at that size,” Dawson says.
As for fawns, they are not monitored by their mother all the time, so make sure to be extra careful with them.
“When they’re small, when they’re born, they don’t have a scent. So mom basically comes and feeds them and then leaves them. If you see one and they’re just curled up and they’re happy, mom’s coming back, she’s just left them in a cool shaded spot. If you see it and there’s no blood, there’s no bugs… best thing to do is just leave it,” Dawson says.
A common misconception with deer is that you’re able to feed them anything. However, that is not the case.
“If you find one, don’t feed it. A lot of times people take it in, they’ll give it regular milk, giving them baby’s formula. They’ll give them water, but they really need specific formula. So it’s better off not to feed them at all and wait until the rehabber gets them,” Dawson says.
