Real Life "Bambi and Thumper"

These images were forwarded in an email recently. Amazing.

Deer at Cheekwood, Nashville, TN

We were walking on the sculpture tour and when I took a picture of these deer, this eerie optical effect happened with the deer's eyes. It was quite a surprise when I looked at the pictures later.


The deer were barely interested in us and they looked our way occasionally, but they were obviously used to people.

Cheekwood is a beautiful museum and gardens. If you're near Nashville, consider visiting. Click here.

Amazing Deer Rescue!

This one was sent to me by Casper Kelly from an email received.
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Last Saturday morning, my buddy Bo Warren and I were trolling for stripers in the Chesapeake Bay. We were 1½ miles offshore in about 80 feet of water contemplating why the fish weren't biting. We looked back to check our gear and saw something odd in the water. Was it a seal?

Can't be, we don't have seals around here. On closer look, it turned out to be a buck that was WAY off course. He was desperate and barely staying afloat. I've seen deer swim a river or bayou before. When you see that, the first thing you notice is that they are powerful swimmers. Their head and shoulders are out of the water and they make surprisingly good headway. This critter was just keeping his nose up and looked like he'd been swimming all night long. In fact, he was so worn out that he swam toward the boat probably thinking it looked enough like land to him. When he got closer though, he wasn't sure what to make of the two dudes on board, and backed of f. So , since the fish weren't biting, we thought we'd give this buck a hand. Turns out Bo grew up around cows and was really handy with a bowline. He lassoed the deer on the first shot!

Bo grabbed his neck, I grabbed the flank, and we barreled over backwards into the boat. Before I knew it, Bo was on top of him and had him tied up just like a calf. We hit the gas and ran him to the closest beach - Kent Point . I beached the boat and we carefully unloaded the deer onto the sand.

The whole time we kept thinking he was going to kick the hell out of us. He never did though, he was totally spent. We untied him and jumped back. Too weak to stand, he just sat there quivering. We even picked him up again and put his feet underneath him, but he still couldn't walk. Don't know if he made it or not, but I think his chances were vastly improved.

A Deer: Submitted by Caspar Kelly

First, be very careful because, yes, deer can imprint. Bringing a deer in the house is like the worst thing to do. Except feeding it while is in there. We learned this, and hope others will learn from our experience.

This whole tale is long and has good and bad.

The only reason we were concerned at all was that it was laying in the grass and weeds we mow and we thought it was dead. I had been out earlier with Gryffyn (one of our special dogs-for-autistic-children doing some drills, and it wasn't there. When my husband went out later he called me. "Come look."

I immediately thought that something was wrong by the tone of his voice.

"Is it something dead?"

He said yes, it's a fawn.

Sure enough it was lying there not moving a muscle. We pondered what could have happened and assumed something had attacked it, although all our dogs were up. Still, it wasn't bloody, but sometimes injuries don't show. Then all of a sudden I saw it breathe. It wiggled its nose and its ears, but it was rigid and wouldn't move when we touched it.

We assumed that maybe it had a disease. We keep penicillin here, so i said, let's try to shoot it with some. We call the vet to find out what to do and he says, call the game warden.

Well we live in the deer capital of the world and it took almost a half hour to find someone to talk to about wildlife. Of course if you were to catch more than your share of fish the game warden is right on top of you!

We put it in a box and brought it in to call. When i picked it up i could tell it was responsive and alert and i could feel the heart beating pretty strong, but it wouldn't stand or lift it's head.

Now we know that's what baby deer do. Their only defence is that they don't move and they are hard to see -unless of course they are lying on the lawn. The good part is that, it takes awhile to imprint -- longer than 20 mins -- and we didn't touch it much with our hands.

We placed it in a box and picked it up with a towel. We did not feed it or shoot it with meds (we keep a lot of meds for the farm animals and special dogs). The nature advisor said that the mom left it to go eat and would likely return. She said to just place it back on the edge of the woods near where we found it, keep the dogs away and wait until night, when the mother would likely return. So we laid it in tall grass, snapped a few pics and waited.

Sometime later, the mom deer came bak and reunited with the fawn.

Still, with all the concerns aside how often do you get to hold a baby deer -- even if it is with a towel. It weighed barely 5 pounds.