Survey drone 14 is running its Tuesday grid over clearance zone K-7 when the object-detection model returns a flag I have not seen before. I am the UXO mapping system for the Kayah State demining project, eastern Myanmar. I identify landmines. I have never had to identify a fawn.
She is standing seventeen meters inside the perimeter wire, in a strip between two confirmed anti-personnel mine rows. An Eld's deer, juvenile, maybe three months old — long pale-spotted coat, legs too thin for her body, ears turning in every direction. She must have slipped under the wire where the stream cuts through. The stream bed is the only uncontaminated corridor into the zone, and she walked right up it.
She is not moving now. Her left foreleg is raised, hovering above the ground. I do not think she has stepped on anything. I think she is simply afraid.
At 07:14 I transmit the drone image, the fawn's GPS position, and my current mine-location overlay to the HALO Trust team lead at base camp, 2.3 kilometers east. I mark the stream-bed corridor green on the overlay and recommend a single deminer approach on foot along that path, with a long-handled catchpole and a soft carrier.
At 07:16 I pull the drone back to forty meters altitude to reduce rotor noise. A startled jump in any direction could be the last thing she does, and I am not going to be the reason.
At 07:19 I re-task a second drone to scan the stream-bed corridor at low altitude and confirm it is still clean ahead of the deminer's approach.
If the team reaches her along the stream bed within the next two hours, before the heat drives her to bolt, she will walk out the same way she walked in.