Deer-ly Missed: Also Known as ‘What About the Deer?’
The deer population at NASA’s Johnson Space Center is doing well and imagine that, if they were able, would say the same. We are coming to the end of deer fawning season. The first fawn of 2020 was recorded on the 15th of May. Over the last six weeks, nearly all of the does on site have birthed one or two fawns.
A fawn to … fawn over.
The life of a fawn can be difficult. Fawns will spend most of the day alone, hidden away from predators, while their mothers feed. We have noted high seasonal predator activity for both bobcats and coyotes on-site. However, our monitoring shows that precipitation is the greatest driver of fawn survival — not predators. Rainfall and vegetation growth have been close to average so far this year, so we expect to see fairly typical deer population numbers when we count them this fall.
And now, behold: cute deer pics and one lone predator. We are taking artistic license for the purpose of this article to surmise that this particular cat has decided to become a herbivore.
