SPOKANE – Each June, well-intentioned people pull up to the Ponti Veterinary Clinic with fawns they found all alone in Washington and Idaho forests.

Wildlife rehabilitator Marilyn Omlor, who works at the clinic, wants people to know that these fawns don’t need help. Most are not orphaned, but they are victims of a crime: fawn-napping.

Taking wildlife into captivity is a misdemeanor in both Washington and Idaho, with fines of up to $540 in Washington and up to $1,000 in Idaho.

Deer sometimes hide their fawns and leave the area for hours at a time.

“It’s really hard to make people understand that,” said Omler, who’s caring for four fawns, but she believes only one was orphaned – a dead doe was discovered nearby.

Omler feeds the fawns goat-milk formula three times a day but says she’s no substitute for a mother deer.

“If you come upon a fawn, look at it; take some pictures; and walk away,” she said.

Wildlife officials don’t know what to do.

“People just have a hard time leaving a cute, little fawn alone,” said Chip Corsi, regional supervisor for Idaho Department of Fish and Game in Coeur d’Alene.

“We put the message out every year, but it doesn’t seem to resonate,” said Madonna Luers, a spokeswoman for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Over the past two weeks, WDFW’s Spokane office has fielded an average of six calls per day from people who found fawns in the woods, Luers said. On one day, the office handled 18 fawn-related calls. In most cases, the callers were persuaded to return the fawns to the place where they were found, in hopes they could be reunited with their mothers.

The birthing season for local deer typically runs from mid-May to late June.

Fawns are born without a scent, which makes them difficult for predators to detect. Mothers leave their fawns for four to six hours at a time, returning to nurse. The absent-mother parenting is a protective mechanism. It keeps does from leading coyotes and cougars to their babies.

“It’s the way their life history works,” Corsi said. “They tuck the little guys away where they can be secure. The behavior has been in place at least since the last Ice Age.”

Newborn fawns lie motionless in the grass, camouflaged by their spots. They’re vulnerable to fawn-napping during the first 10 days of their life. After that, they’re too fast to catch.

In late September, the fawn-napped deer will be released on 270 acres of private land near Deer Park, which adjoins state-owned property.