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Roger Felton
We lived in Austin for several years and our neighborhood was loaded with deer. A dozen times a day you'd see (and hear) a herd of them trotting up and down the street. None of the neighborhood dogs seemed to pay any attention to them. One morning my neighbor called me and said that a momma doe had been hit by a car and, mortally wounded, ran to a nearby creek and died. Her fawn wandered into the neighbor's backyard and needed rescue.
Growing up in Mangum Manor, my best friend, Cornel, lived right behind our house on several acres of land between Brickhouse Gully and Mangum Road. He, his brother, Vannoy, and sister Geraldine, literally had a zoo of animals they cared for. Not just horses and bulls, but they had peacocks, a red fox, a retarded monkey, a bobcat, two skunks, two chipmunks (Chip and Dale, lol), a raccoon, an owl, 5 hawks, tame Mallard ducks plus some exotic pigeons. There were more animals but the list is longer than I can remember. Geraldine had friends in high places and was allowed to raise a black panther cub for about a year. As it got older (and bigger!) I couldn't get near that bugger...nor the bobcat, but they loved Geraldine. Some years later I heard she provided many of the animals for the Renaissance Festival in Magnolia.
So, from the time I was 9 until HS graduation, I was pretty familiar with animals and their care. Over the years Cornel and I also collected several dozen varieties of turtles including a monster snapping turtle that would barely fit in a hula hoop. We also hunted and captured at least 2 or 3 of every poisionous snake common to North America. The rattlesnakes wouldn't eat in captivity so we had to hand feed them from the white mice that we bred. I never got bit but that chore never was what I considered a hoot. Eventually, the animals were released or donated to the Houston Zoo when Cornel's parents sold the property for 2.3 million and it's now a large appartment complex. Gee, I hope we didn't forget to remove the snakes...lol.
So caring for that fawn was kind of a "blast from the past" and Donner was happily running with the herd. Home visits on occasion were always a pleasant surprise and Donner always knew I'd have a handful of corn for stopping by.
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