This video from May 2011 showed up recently on my Facebook feed as a Memories post. I just had to watch it again.

Spring is a great time to be a child. After a heavy overnight rain, the streets and sidewalks are littered with worms and nightcrawlers ripe for the picking. And all sorts of other woodland and swamp creatures can be discovered by young curious minds, too.

As the video shows, sometimes a child makes a much bigger discovery than expected. My youngest son, Luke (almost 6 at the time), was searching for frogs in our backyard with a neighbor buddy when he walked up on a bedded newborn whitetail fawn.

My wife followed Luke back to the fawn with video camera in hand, and even though he was told repeatedly not to touch the fawn, he simply couldn’t resist. (But it’s hard to blame him.)

Thankfully, the fawn’s mother overlooked the human odor left on the fawn by Luke’s petting, and the following morning the doe led the fawn away from our backyard to the woods bordering our property.

This spring, watch out for newborn fawns in tall-grass areas around homes and businesses in suburban areas. If you see one, snap a quick smartphone pic if you wish, but don’t bother the fawn. And certainly don’t touch it. A doe purposefully left the fawn there for safety from predators such as coyotes, and she’ll soon be back to get her fawn.