As I wandered through to the kitchen for the first of the day’s essential injections of caffeine, a movement outside the front door caught my eye. The old doe was back, with her own joey and the adopted trio in close attendance, hopeful, as ever, that something edible might materialise from the humans’ den, their curiosity emphasised by the smudged nose- and paw-marks on the glass. From the shards of orange on the ground around them, I guessed that Keith had already obliged with a carrot or two. I went out to give the old girl a scratch. The orphaned trio kept their distance, still wary despite their habituation, but her own joey, head deep in her mother’s pouch to suckle, allowed me gently to stroke her too. I wondered if the old doe was carrying
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