Sweetbriar Nature Center in Smithtown got an emergency call May 28 from Suffolk County Legislator Robert Trotta (R-Fort Salonga). He was driving on the Sunken Meadow Parkway when he encountered a man on the side of the road aiding a dying doe that went into labor after being struck by a car.
The man, Gordon Edelstein, was pulling a fawn from the birth canal as Trotta got out of his car. Another newborn fawn, which was lying nearby, seemed healthy, he said. The second-born fawn was breathing faintly, so Edelstein, a retired Marine administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Unfortunately, only one fawn survived.
“It was a horrible scene and sad to see,” said Trotta, a former cop who often stops at roadside incidents. “Life is so fragile.”
Janine Bendicksen, the director of Wildlife Rehabilitation at Sweetbriar, who quickly arrived at the scene estimates that the fawns were born about one week prematurely. She wrapped the surviving baby deer in a blanket and took the animal home and bottle fed it colostrum, the nutritious milk that mammals produce and mewborns typically get when they first nurse.
The next day, as fate would have it, Bendicksen noticed that a wild deer in the nearby woodlands had also just given birth.
“Deer typically don’t accept fawns from another doe,” Bendicksen said. “But we thought we would give it a try.”
The new mother approached the orphaned fawn and started licking and nurturing it. The doe then accepted the fawn as her own and let it nurse.
“We were all moved to tears,” Bendicksen said. “It’s a tragic story with a happy ending.”
Bendicksen, who has worked at Sweetbriar for 20 years, said that the rescue was one of the more remarkable experiences of her career.
A video of the Bendicksen bottle feeding the fawn can be found here.
