There are a lot of deer in Iowa. There are deer in the corn fields. There are deer leaping out of ditches into oncoming traffic. There are deer gliding silently at night like shadows through parks and private lawns.

Some towns have more deer than others. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources reports that Iowa City has one of the densest deer populations in the state with about 100 deer per square mile. The human population in the city is 2,971 per square mile or around 30 people per deer. So, you know what that means. We have to share.

Last week, it was my turn to babysit two adorable fawns, all brown spots and spindly legs, curled up and remarkably well camouflaged under the shade of an apple tree. Early one morning their mother dropped them off the way mothers do at daycare, no doubt with last minute instructions: “Now be good and don’t fight with your sister. And eat lots of grass.”

This was not the first time I have been called on to babysit fawns. Before, I thought it was irresponsible of a mother deer to abandon her babies in people’s yards. But the reason they do isn’t about neglect. It’s about smell.

Not that most of us would ever notice, but it seems adult deer smell strongly of…presumably… deer. To predators like bobcats and coyotes, the smell of deer is like a dinner bell (if you could smell a dinner bell). Baby deer, on the other hand, don’t smell like much of anything at all. This serves as a kind of natural protection. You know how everybody likes to hold new babies because they smell so nice (with certain occasional notable exceptions). Anyway, mother deer, not wanting to draw attention to their own delicious smell, stash their fawns in odd places for a couple of days until the little tykes are strong enough to run away from anything wanting to eat them.

Also, new-born fawns have not yet learned to be afraid of predators. I don’t know if humans could be considered predators but we are at least a bad influence. I mean, look what we’ve done to raccoons, getting them hooked on dumpster junk food. During the two days the fawns spent in our yard, whenever I walked by, they would come up expectantly like greyhound puppies at an animal shelter. But I refrained from petting them, cute as they were, because they are wild animals, not pets.

In her 1996 presidential campaign speech, Hillary Clinton quoted the African proverb, “It takes a village” to raise a child. She contended that neighbors, doctors, churches and schools all help bring up a child to adulthood. I was happy to do my little bit to help raise the fawns. I hope they learned some lessons during their stay in our yard. Like– lawn mowers chew grass but they don’t eat it. And that your mom will always come back for you. The rest, they’ll have to learn from some other village elder.