Tanya Decatur saw the makings of a perfect family photo from her front window on a recent sunny morning. A three-legged deer she named Tripod was standing on a Maine driveway with three fawns she had recently started caring for.
Decatur, a hobbyist photographer, rushed to her bedroom to grab her camera. She captured Tripod, who lost her front right leg two years ago, and a fawn looking straight at the camera.
Since Decatur posted the picture on Facebook on Thursday, hundreds of thousands of people have reacted to it and tens of thousands have shared it.
“I knew people were going to like it,” Decatur, 42, told The Washington Post. “But not to this extent.”
In her Facebook post, Decatur wrote that her neighbors have been looking out for the doe since she was injured and called Tripod “a shining example of survival and love.”
Decatur, a receptionist for a cleaning company, has been taking photos of Maine wildlife — including eagles, foxes and woodpeckers — for about a decade. She picked up the hobby from her mother and said it helps her decompress.
In November 2024, Decatur said, her neighbor accidentally shot a deer’s front right leg during hunting season. A week or two later, Decatur said, she saw the deer missing her front right leg roaming woods and fields near her house in Machiasport, Maine. Tripod limped but ran surprisingly fast when she was frightened, Decatur said.
By spending most of her time near houses, Tripod probably was avoiding coyotes and bobcats, Decatur said. Some mornings, Decatur found Tripod sleeping near her backyard pasture, where she keeps a donkey and a horse.
Tripod had a fawn this spring, Decatur said, and in the past week, she has been caring for two other fawns. Decatur believes the two fawns are the offspring of a deer that was fatally struck by a car in front of her house in mid-June.
Decatur said she hopes to capture more intimate moments of their lives this summer.
“I feel better knowing, when I see them, that they’re not harmed and they’re still around,” she said.
Decatur plans to advocate for a “deer crossing” sign in her neighborhood in hopes it will protect Tripod. The sign would be even better, Decatur said, if it showed a three-legged deer.
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