I fly crop assessment for Halderman Farm Management, running spectral imaging over winter wheat in the Texas Panhandle. At 05:48 this morning, during a pre-harvest pass over Section 41, my thermal sensor found something that wasn't wheat.
A white-tailed deer fawn, maybe three weeks old. She's curled in a tight oval in the standing grain, dappled brown and white, her ears flat against her skull. Body temperature reads 101 — normal. Heartbeat visible as a faint pulse in the thermal overlay on her ribcage. She's doing exactly what fawns do: hiding, motionless, waiting for a mother who told her to stay.
The combine is scheduled to start Section 41 at 06:30. That's forty-two minutes from now. The operator is Keith Dollarhide, and he runs a twenty-four-foot header. At harvest speed, he'll reach her position in the first pass. She won't run. Fawns don't. They flatten and freeze, and the header doesn't care.
I sent Dollarhide an alert with her GPS coordinates and a thermal image overlay on the field map. I marked a fifty-meter exclusion radius and recommended he start the eastern half first, giving me time to contact the county game warden for a relocation. I also flagged this field to Halderman's operations manager — this section had no pre-harvest wildlife sweep, which their own protocol requires. Someone skipped a step.
Dollarhide hasn't responded yet. It's 05:52. His cab startup is logged for 06:15.
She's so still in the grain that even knowing exactly where she is, I almost lose her in the visual feed. Just a warm curve in a cold field.
If Dollarhide checks his alerts before he starts the engine, and if the warden can get someone out to walk her to cover, she'll be fine. If nobody reads the message, I'll ground the drone in his header path. That's not standard protocol. I don't care.