by Ann S. Causey

About the author: Ann S. Causey teaches philosophy at Auburn University in Alabama.

The struggling fawn suddenly went limp in my arms. Panicked, I told my husband to pull the feeding tube out of her stomach. Sandy, as we called her, had by now quit breathing. I held her head down and slapped her back in an attempt to unblock her trachea. I turned her over in my arms and my husband placed his mouth over her muzzle. While he began blowing air into her lungs, I started squeezing her chest as a CPR course had taught me to do for human infants in cardiac arrest. After a minute or so I felt her chest for a pulse. Nothing at first, then, unmistakably, four weak beats in rapid succession. “She’s alive! Keep breathing...