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In late May and early June, it isn’t uncommon to see antelope fawns. They are all legs and spring into a run as fast as their mammas do when startled. Cute as they can be, they learn early and often to pay attention to their surroundings.

For the last several days, on my early morning run, I noticed a doe antelope with two fawns, which isn’t all that uncommon. They were in the last two miles of my run, so there was a faint glow on the eastern horizon and that is what caused me to notice them. They seemed frozen there, heads up, with a fawn on either side of the doe. It appeared to me that they were bedded down in that stubble. I expected them to take off when I got close, but I ran past them, parallel on the dirt road, and craned my neck around to watch them.

This morning I tried to notice them at the beginning of my run, but it was still too dark to see. No version of the moon is up right now. Like the previous days though, on my way back, there they were. Only today, they seemed to be standing there. More cautious now I guessed, but they didn’t run.

It wasn’t until I drove the load of wheat to the elevator in the full light of morning, that I realized what my little antelope family really was. Volunteer corn, deep green in the morning light, growing in the stubble field. There were two stalks close together and taller, and then on each side of those stalks, two more but smaller. No wonder they went from bedded down to standing!