On A Winter’s Day: A Story About How I Received Deep Gratitude From A White-Tailed Deer

A number of years ago, before I’d left my corporate career, I was working from home on a snowy day because it was too snowy to commute. And I experienced something I would never have imagined.

That house was fairly far back from the road and there were no houses visible on either side or across the street. I was working at my kitchen table where I could see, through the sliding glass doors, the narrow snowy lawn, the small hill behind that which had pine trees bending a bit from the snow, and a very old stone wall parallel to my house with a small gap I could walk through when I wanted to hike in those woods. I was heads down working at my laptop, writing a research paper. And then I heard an unusual sound, or I thought I did.

And then I realized that the sound was coming from the pine forest beyond the stone wall. The sound was a scream – an incredibly loud scream as it came towards me, something I’d never heard. Suddenly, a white deer fawn, still young enough to be covered in white spots, came galloping through the gap in the wall. He took a turn to the right, screaming and screaming, and continued galloping counterclockwise around my house. I stayed at the table, wondering what was going on.

Suddenly, a white-tailed doe appeared at the gap in the stone wall, galloped a few more steps and then stopped. She whipped her head back and forth, desperately trying to figure out how to get to her screaming fawn. I got up from my table and opened the sliding door, which amazingly didn’t frighten the doe, and I stood on the step outside the door and pointed to my right – where the fawn would end out if he kept running around the house. The doe was watching me intently, and then she took off to gallop clockwise around the house. A few seconds later, the screaming stopped. I sat back down at my table, assumed that the doe and fawn had reunited, which was wonderful, but would stay away from my house – and me.

I was wrong about that. A few minutes later, I saw the reunited doe and fawn walking, very close together, around the corner of my house, heading up the small hill towards that gap in the stone wall. I got up and stood at the now closed sliding door, watching. The doe let the fawn go first through the gap, and after he’d done that, she stopped, parallel to the wall, turned to me, and looked directly at me – I could feel the energy she was sending to me as she looked into my eyes. I didn’t move. And she stood stock still that way for maybe ten seconds, which seemed like a long time, but it was a beautiful time. I had a strong knowing that she was sending me deep gratitude. And then she turned and, along with her fawn, walked into the forest.

I grew up in a then-rural area in Massachusetts and spent a lot of time in the woods and fields, where I got to know deer, chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, ferrets, the occasional beaver, snakes, a snapping turtle, and many species of birds – from pheasants to cardinals to chickadees to snakes. This experience with the white deer reminded me of my childhood ability to have two-way interactions, however brief, with wild animals. I thought nothing of that, assuming that this was normal, so I didn’t speak about it. The experience was one of several that pointed me to becoming an animal communicator.