This man saved a baby deer’s life. Then she wanted to be his pet forever.
A man recently found himself in the middle of a real-life Bambi story when a doe gave birth to two fawns in his backyard. Then things got a little emotional…
Darius Sasnauskas, originally from Lithuania, lives near Yellowstone National Park, and he documented the amazing and totally moving story in a video recently posted to YouTube. To say it’s giving us feels might the biggest understatement in the world.
First, one of the little fawns is born with an injured leg. She tries to keep up with her mom and brother, but just can’t. Sadly, the other deer aren’t waiting around for her to catch up. (I’m sure they have legit reasons, like predators and everything. BUT STILL.) Eventually, the hurt fawn curls into a ball in the grass and…brace yourselves…mom leaves her there all alone.
We’re trying really hard not to judge the mom deer at this point (after all, she’s a deer, not a human), but it’s hard. So hard. Because this is just too sad for words. (Caution: seeing the tiny baby limp after her family in the video will wreck you for the rest of the day. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. I’m crying all over my keyboard, guys.)
Obviously, a newborn fawn has no way to survive all on its own. Especially in Darius’s backyard where apparently, bears just roam around free. (Seriously, he lives in an animal wonderland. We wouldn’t be surprised if a unicorn went dashing through his yard.)
Darius is clearly an awesome person, because he rescues the fawn and brings her inside the house where she sleeps in a box full of warm fleece blankets, much the confusion and consternation of his pet cats. His dogs are little more chill with the situation. Eventually everyone gets along just peachy.
Then Darius decides to make a brace for the fawn’s leg out of an oatmeal box, and he bottle feeds her every four hours. (We can’t lie. We’re starting to have some feelings for Darius at this point.)
With such loving care, the fawn grows nice and strong and even starts to lose the limp. And because this place is such a wonderful animal kingdom, she even finds a surrogate parent in one of Darius’s pet dogs, Mack. Mack licks the fawn all over and treats her like a tiny puppy, and if we hadn’t already melted into a puddle on the floor (way back a few paragraphs ago), we would now.
With the fawn nursed back to health, Darius sets out to find a deer family for the little cutie. He tries to release the fawn in an area where there are deer moms. Because even though the fawn clearly loves him and follows him around everywhere, “no one can replace her real mom.” (Aww.) The fawn isn’t having it, though. She wants to stay with Darius. (Um, we can’t really blame her, can we?) He releases her into the wild multiple times, and she follows him right back to his yard every single time. (As would any of us, probs.)
Eventually though, something amazing happens. Mama deer shows up in Darius’s backyard and is reunited with her baby. THANK GOODNESS. The family is back together again, and the fawn can grow up in the wilderness like a normal deer. According to the video’s caption, the doe and her two fawns stop by regularly, which is enough to make us cry all over again.
Don’t for a minute think that we’re wishing we could marry this man and the little deer would come back to be the flower girl at the wedding. Because we’re definitely not thinking that. Probably not, anyway. Maybe not. Okay, we totally are. But COME ON. This is just too darn adorable. We can’t, you guys. We absolutely cannot.
Darius is very humble about the whole thing and insists he didn’t do anything special. On YouTube, he wrote, “I didn’t expect this story to become so popular. I am sure that any of us with a little bit of a conscience about our existence, with love for the nature and animals would do the same.”
We hope so. We really do.
Watch this magical, real-life Bambi story below. (You’ll need tissues. Lots and lots of tissues. TRUST.)
[All images via video. Video via YouTube.]