Fodder Wing

I’m vocal and unapologetic about my love for and fascination with animals. This personal quirk invites people to poke fun at me, which I try to accept with good humor. I’m not the sort of person who would hoard cats in a tiny apartment or feed a chihuahua from my fork or invite a grizzly bear to eat me on camera, but I do find myself drawn to any animals near me. My wife describes me as having a “mystical connection” with wild things, and they do seem to feel comfortable approaching me.

Here on this blog, a reader once described me as an “Ellie Mae,” a reference to the character in the Beverly Hillbillies sitcom of the Sixties, a girl who was always walking around with a possum on her shoulder or a snake in her pocket or a coon draped around her neck. While I appreciated the humor in the tag, I replied that I tend to think of myself more as a Fodderwing, who was a character in Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ great novel, The Yearling. Fodderwing is a crippled little boy who’s not right in the head, but who enjoys a close bond with animals. He names the book’s title character, a fawn, for the protagonist, Jodie, calling the deer Flag. Fodderwing is sentimental and impractical and simpleminded and something of a burden to his family, but his heart and his intentions are in the right place. Thus, I identify more with him than with a comedic female character.

I got to thinking about the movie version of The Yearling and looked up the actor who portrayed Fodderwing, a young man named Donn Gift. The research I was able to do yielded some rather sad results. About ten years ago, Donn Gift was discussed on a blog, found here. A reader of the blog left a comment that provided the most information I could find anywhere on the internet:

I lived in a house across the street from Donn Gift between 1958 and 1966. I can believe that he was already 25 when I met him: “Gift always portrayed a sickly looking, crippled boy,” because that’s what he was. He had been stricken with polio as a child, and he always walked with a cane and with a brace on one of his legs, like FDR–or Forrest Gump. Even at that age, he looked to me almost the same as he did as a boy in the movies. Growing up in Hollywood, I had already figured out early on that the real secret of success for child stars is that they are always really chronologically older than they look–and this is almost always due to some horrible disease that has stunted their growth. This was the case in Donn’s instance. I felt so sorry for him. He lived in a crummy apartment, in a crummy apartment building on our crummy street, and he didn’t have any money. He couldn’t even afford a car, and I can still remember seeing him every morning limping along with his cane to the bus stop to catch a a ride to his job in the Chancery Office of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. I think he was always in pain–physical and emotional, and he always seemed to me very sad and lonely.

(Comment by George Donigian on 9/6/2011)

I like to think that Mr. Gift is now enjoying a peace and contentment in the presence of God, a joy incomprehensible to anyone here in this world. I hope he knows that his portrayal of a classic literary character provided happiness and reflection to at least one human being. I like to think that he is surrounded by friendly animals like the ones shown in the movie with him.

~ S.K. Orr