It's not something you get to do very often.

Cutting up a baby.

Their bodies are so new and tender, you can slice through their bones with just a scalpel.

The call came a little before lunch. I had to answer twice before the woman at the other end started to speak.

She was ranching in this country long before telephones came along. At least, outside of town. Perhaps she doesn't remember that when you make the call, you're the one who's supposed to speak.

She found a dead antelope fawn in her yard.

Ooookay. Their place is the only shade, windbreak, water and lush grass for a couple miles around. The kind of place a dying critter would naturally navigate towards.

I've been to their place for dead animals before. But in a normal year, more than half the fawns born in spring don't make it to the middle of summer. The half that don't make it have to die somewhere. In shade by water is a likely spot. I'm not excited yet.

She tells me she had her son drag it off to their bone pile, away from the buildings.

Okay. So it's been beaten, bruised, and left in the hot sun. I'm even less excited about looking at it now.

"A couple days ago."

Ohhh, geez. This is July. There's going to be nothing to look at but bones, hair, slime and maggots. I start thinking of a polite way of telling her I'm not driving out from town to look at something that we're probably not too worried about, and certainly not going to learn anything from.

Then she adds, "And now we found another dead one in the yard today."

Oh. Okay. That's different. One fawn dying in the summer is no surprise. But two, in the same spot, just a few days apart? Well, there's still lots of unexciting explanations, like maybe these were twins and their mother got killed on the nearby highway.

Still... two animals close together, a few days apart...

Better check it out. I'll be there in 15-20 minutes.

At first look, there's nothing unusual about this fawn. Except that it's dead.

But as I gather it up to put it in the truck, I notice hair is falling off the rump. The eyes say it is freshly dead, so hair shouldn't be sloughing off the skin yet...

The wife is home when we get back, and shares her lunch with the heelers. And I realize I have a quandary:

Which is better, cutting up a stinking, decaying body and then going to eat lunch, or,

Eating lunch, and then going to cut up a stinking, decaying carcass?

I eat first. Which is probably not the most professional thing to do. It allows decomp to continue on the carcass, and gives dozens more flies the opportunity to find it.

But lunch tastes better.

So, with the flavor of dark chocolate still in my mouth, I go outside and shoo away the flies. And begin my examination. By the tiny dark cheek patch, I know it's a buck fawn...

and right away I see a problem.

What I thought was scours running down his hind legs is actually dried blood. His entire butt is open, raw flesh. You just couldn't see it from all the hair plastered on.

It's a solid mass of maggots. And there's two generations of these larvae. Tiny little ones, probably newly hatched, and a smattering of big ones. Days older.

Since he died last night, they had to be growing on him while he was still alive. And since most maggots only eat dead flesh, this painful damage to his butt is old. And was rotting while he was still walking.

So there's your problem.

But just to be sure, I run a quick and dirty necropsy. Just to see if there is anything obviously wrong on the inside.

There isn't. Even when I take individual organs, like this liver, and make random slices into the tissues.

The only atypical thing I notice is his rumen contents are awfully runny, which suggests he has been drinking a lot, but not eating. His empty intestines say the same thing.

Whatever happened to him, he didn't have his mama around anymore to feed him. And perhaps the other fawn was his twin, and just couldn't last as long without mom.

I turn my attention back to the wound on the butt. Which isn't really accurate, because the wound is his butt. All of it. I skin the hide back around the edges, expecting to see fang or talon holes.

There aren't any. Can't blame coyotes or eagles for this. It is as if you took a big, dull knife and just sliced off the top quarter to half inch of his hind end. And I come back to my original suspected culprit.

The highway. Looks like this little guy had a close call with a speeding vehicle. And didn't get out of the way quite fast enough.

Sad, but not something to worry about for the future. Nothing contagious. Nothing poisonous.

That's good news.

The rancher's parting words as I backed out of his mom's yard were "You'll let us know if it's something serious?"

Of course.

And I let him know that it wasn't, too.

If you would like something prettier to look at, I finished a back entry on the desert flowers I saw last week.