Deer as Metaphor: Part I
Last Thursday morning we let our dogs out into the dark of our back yard—a steep slope leading to woods just beyond our fence. Instantly they started going berserk at something, and we feared the worst: a coyote. They’ve been in the area lately, howling like bad dreams in the night. It took me a while to get to a spot where I could shine a flashlight on the scene. It wasn’t a coyote, thank God (or the dogs would already have been dead), but a deer. From what I could see, it was trapped in the corner with the dogs right in its face, but as I made my way down the hill in my slippers the situation became more and more baffling. The deer was hanging from the fence by its back legs, apparently caught in the wire mesh on the neighbor’s side but with its body entirely on our side. Its forelegs were just able to touch the ground. I tried to get close enough to see if I could free the trapped foot, but she was panicking and hissing at me, so I backed off and concentrated on getting the dogs away from her. They weren’t cooperating.
Finally, the dogs went to my wife at the top of the hill, and she got them inside. The only thing to do now was wait till the light came up, then get to the fence from the neighbor’s yard, where the deer couldn’t get at me as I worked to free her.
We didn’t want to disturb the neighbor so early. He suffered a stroke during brain surgery last year and has had a long slow recovery, so if he was still sleeping it seemed insensitive to get him up. On the other hand, he’s a gentleman who loves to hunt, so it did cross my mind that he might see shadowy figures on his land and break out the rifle.
We decided to knock on his door. The dog answered but not the neighbor, so we thought it was okay to head down to the fence line, which I did while my wife waited at the gate in case the neighbor came out.
I made my way to the spot where the deer was caught and saw right away this wasn’t going to be easy. The wire of the fence had snagged her right where the hoof joins the foot and it was lodged between the two toes, held hopelessly tight by her weight. I tried to bend it away with pliers, pushing at the hoof at the same time but couldn’t free it.
The neighbor popped out of his house calling Who’s there?, which I didn’t want to be the last words I ever heard in this life, but luckily my wife was close enough to answer him back. After she explained what was going on, he loaned us his wire cutters, and I headed back out to the fence.
I made a first tentative cut, not wanting her to fall too suddenly. Nothing happened. Her foot was still trapped. Another cut, and nothing. A third, final cut, but now I had to pry the wire out from between her toes. Her whole weight was hanging by her leg across the top of the fence, miraculously unbroken as far as I could tell, so all I could do was gingerly lift her. At once, she went down, and as she dropped she let out a terrible scream and landed on her chest with the bad leg bent back. I wondered if she had dislocated her hip.
She was free now but not attempting to move. She seemed to understand that she had to be still for a while to build up a little strength for her escape. I left her there, not wanting to disturb her further.
Three hours later she was still there, making occasional attempts to get up but failing. We would have to make a decision soon about how to respond if she was unable to move. We knew that calling the local animal welfare people would probably mean she’d be put down by the end of the day and removed. If we decided to wait a day, it would be a long day and night of suffering, but it would also be her only chance to live. As our neighbor had told us, they’re tough animals. We knew deer and other wild animals must suffer beyond human sight every day, yet we somehow now felt responsible for this one’s life.
There’s surprisingly little authorities can do to actually help wild animals in distress. The advice is usually to let the animal wander away, but sometimes—possibly in our situation—the injured animal can’t walk or jump a fence to get out. When things are desperate, you might be able to get Animal Control or the police to come and put it out of its misery.
The last thing we wanted was a deer corpse on our property. We used to live on a Sonoma County farm, and one time a deer was hit by a car and rotted in the road ditch just outside our property. It was an experience we never want to relive.
After another couple of hours, I saw that “Evelyn,” as my wife had begun to call her, was lying with her neck outstretched in a pose that seemed dire to me. I started making phone calls.