Until Thursday, I never knew that deer made sounds.
Thursday was a warm day, the warmest so far this year.
Having a touch of spring fever, I took off early from work to go with a buddy bike
riding. Raleigh has such nice greenways and they give us city dwellers
much needed time to commune with nature.
We were on the lower end of the Crabtree trail near Laurel
Woods when a bird’s nest caught our attention. We heard some young birds
fussing for food and saw Mom darting into the nest to calm their racket.
Across the creek, a woman was walking in the brush along the
edge. She started to call out, not to us. It became obvious that
she was calling her dogs that had wandered too far away.
We went back to our bird watching when we realized that both
the calling from across the creek and the barks of the dogs had changed their
tones. The dogs were running, yelping and growling. The underbrush
was rustling with the new activity.
The woman began to yell the dog’s names and new
phrases. “Stop! Get off!” She picked up a big stick and was
swinging it at the dogs, which was no small feat since she had her other arm in
a bright blue cast.
That’s when we heard it, a bleat similar to a goat or
sheep. It was the sound of terror and pain. It was a wild animal
sound that I’ll never forget.
A lady from a nearby apartment came down to the trail.
She heard the commotion and recognized the bleat that we didn’t. “A
deer,” she said. “I remember that sound from living in Maine.”
We called out to the woman across the creek. She was
pulling the dogs away and was attaching the leash she had been carrying.
“The dogs ran up a deer,” she called.
We called after her to see if the deer was hurt and to get
her name, but she took off quickly through the ticket not saying another word.
We backtracked down the trail until we could cross to the
other side of the creek. We found the thicket of briars, wild roses and
brush.
Lying there was the young deer. It’s leg broken, bone
protruding through the thin flesh; a hunk of meat missing from the rump and
another from the neck.
It tried to stand, to run away. Instead it hobbled and
crashed into the creek. The lady, a nurse, rushed into the cold creek and
held the deer’s head out of the water to keep it from drowning.
Remembering the cell phone, I called 911. “Is it OK to
call 911 for a deer?” I asked. No one knew for sure, but that was our
only choice we felt.
The 911 operator was patient with us as we tried to describe
where we were on the bike trail. This was no easy task given that there
aren’t many identifying markers in the woods.
We explained that we were near the Golden Corral
headquarters on Glenwood. That’s where the animal control officer parked
when she got there a little later.
By this time another walker had joined our little
group. He supplied a yellow, plastic poncho that the animal control
officer and the lady from the apartment managed to get under the injured deer.
Forming a human chain, we passed the injured animal up the
creek bank, but once we were on dry land, the officer gave us the bad
news. The deer was too far gone and too badly injured to try to
save.
She said as we carried the deer to the officer’s truck that
she would go to a vet’s office where the deer would be humanely
euthanized. She wouldn’t suffer too much more.
With a heavy heart I walked back down the trail to my buddy
and my bike. My only thought by this time was not of the injured deer,
but of the woman with the cast.
She had thoughtlessly allowed her dogs to run free, attack
one of God’s creatures, then committed the worst sin of all, by leaving the
injured animal to suffer and die.
I wonder if she was able to sleep that night. I know I
didn’t.