Photograph by Sarah Campbell, 2008

This January Wildlife Fawn Rescue officially turns 19, but this birthday will be unlike any other Wildlife Fawn Rescue has experienced before. This month, Marjorie Davis, the driving force behind Wildlife Fawn Rescue, is stepping down from her position as Director after 17 years of searching for a suitable replacement. “You can’t just accept anybody because they say they will do it,” she explains. “You have to know they’re going to do it right.”

And if anyone is the best judge of how to “do it right,” it’s Davis. In 1989, three years after the first fawn showed up on her doorstep, Davis applied for her permit from the Department of Fish and Game, making Wildlife Fawn Rescue an official non-profit and turning a seasonal act of compassion into a 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week rescue service. By this time, Davis was already in her 60s. Over the next decade Davis would learn, one unpredictable fawn at a time, everything she could about rescuing fawns, treating their wounds, and releasing them as functional, healthy members of the wild deer community. When Davis reached her 70s, she became increasingly aware of the risks facing an organization so dependent on one person. Always insisting on thinking “realistically,” Davis began looking for a replacement “everywhere” she could. It took 17 years for the right person to find her.

 Melania Mahoney had always heard about Wildlife Fawn Rescue in passing. A Sonoma native and the only sister of eight brothers, she grew up with “a love of animals and being out in the woods.” After graduating from Sonoma High School, Mahoney received a degree in computer science from Santa Rosa Junior College.  Photography, however, had always been a strong passion for her, and after working as a photographer in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, she returned to Sonoma to raise her family and open a photography studio.

It was in conjunction with the opening of Mahoney’s own art gallery in summer of 2007 that Fawn Rescue re-entered her life in the form of an inconspicuous online job posting. Something struck a chord with Mahoney and she met with Davis.

“I had all these things in the works,” says Mahoney about her studio and gallery and her freelance work for the Sonoma Valley Sun, “and I just looked at Marj and said, ‘Marj, I really want to do this. Somehow I’m going to figure out how to do this.’”

Mahoney admits it’s been a bit of a struggle finding someone to take over the lease on the gallery and getting through the wedding photography season, but says, “It’s working itself out. It just feels so right…there’s something in me that feels like this was what was meant to happen.”

On a rainy winter Tuesday in December, Mahoney and Davis are gathered around Davis’s kitchen table, pouring over one of the thousands of reports that Davis, a diligent record-keeper, has collected over the life of Wildlife Fawn Rescue. “It’s more like hitting her over the head with it,” laughs Davis, her white hair pulled into a neat bun, her vibrant smile lines undermining her age of 86, “I have twenty years of files. I have every picture of every fawn I’ve ever had and a complete report on every fawn I’ve ever had.”

Learning from Davis isn’t your standard classroom experience: this is Fawn School, and every picture and every piece of paperwork is accompanied by hands-on experience. Mahoney’s first fawn call was in June 2007.

“I just put the signs out at the gallery,” Mahoney recalls, “after Marj called and said, ‘we have a fawn, our first fawn.’” After a bit of hand wringing because the landlord required Mahoney to be open the hours she posted, Davis agreed to answer the call herself and Mahoney hung up. “I couldn’t stand it,” says Mahoney, “I think five minutes went by and I had the signs back in and the ‘closed’ sign turned around and I had called Marj and said, ‘I’m on my way.’” Mahoney and Davis answered the call together, picking up a little fawn off of Mark West Springs Road. Mahoney says Davis had her hold the fawn on the way home. “I said, ‘Your first fawn,’” recounts Davis, “And she said, ‘My first fawn for the rest of my life,’ and I thought, ‘Whoa.’”

Now Mahoney doesn’t just accompany Davis on the fawn calls, but calls a lot of the shots herself. Davis still accepts fawn calls at her home but now, as Wildlife Fawn Rescue headquarters and the fawn rehabilitation and medical station have shifted to Mahoney’s office and residence in Sonoma, it will be Mahoney’s cell phone that will receive the majority of this next season’s fawn calls.

Contrary to the implications, Davis is not giving up her title of “The Fawn Lady” so quickly. “Everyone always says, ‘Oh, it’ll be great for you to rest and retire,’” Davis laughs, “but I don’t plan to retire. I’m not going to keep telling [Melania] what to do but I’m here to help in any way I can.”

“People write notes to us,” says Davis, “They say ‘I am so glad you’re there, I am so glad somebody is doing that,’ and that’s just the way I feel about Melania. I am relieved that she is here now because she has the same feeling of dedication that I do.”

To reach the Wildlife Fawn Rescue headquarters, contact Melania Mahoney at (707) 291-8151. For more history and information about Wildlife Fawn Rescue, visit fawnrescue.org.