Laura Harrison-Snyder "Two Fawns..."

Snyder's poem "Two Fawns That Didn't See the Light This Spring" is a rude awakening to the brutality that can occur when humans interact with animals. In the first half of the poem, a hunter shoots a doe carrying a fawn that he thought was a buck. It is very bleak, but the hunter saved the meat anyway.

In the second half of the poem a woman accidentally hit a doe that also had a fawn, it heartrendingly describes the fawn's spots and hooves as it was discovered inside the mother.

In each case it was not the human's intent to kill the doe, but such casualties are more likely to happen as humans spread into "wild" territory.