How You Get Born

The strange night sound from the meadow kept repeating itself. Sounded like a buck snorting -- but over and over, rhythmically. Never heard the like, and nervously I stepped out on the porch a few times over the evening hours to listen. It didn't go away. And with my wild, city-bred imagination that is full of ax-murderers, etc., I decided not to get a flashlight and venture out to seek the source. Locked the doors and went to bed.

A week passed and toward dusk I saw the local doe and she was nosing along a very small fawn -- "a football with legs," a friend had described it. Just one fawn. (She usually has two.) But just this one. And I added 2 plus 2 and realized what I had heard that evening was the doe in labor. I could have seen a fawn being born under a meadow of summer stars! I missed it because I made myself afraid!