A Deer, a Doe . . .

So the Julie Andrews song goes.  In our case it was yearling doe caught in the rear yard fence.  About a year ago, we had a fence placed across part of our backyard and is integral with our neighbors fence.  The fence closed off a favorite route for the deer who feed at a house not far from us.

This doe obviously used to going through fence as a fawn.  In those days she could fit through the bars.  But she is near a year old now and got caught.  Her head and fore part of her torso easily fit through the bars.  But her hips did not fit and she was stuck.

The animal control fellow came out.  He climbed over the fence and grabbed her rear legs and tried to pull her back.  But that was not working to well as she had driven as far forward as she could and really wedged herself in between the bars.

So I told the fellow to bend the bars open.  He managed to get perhaps an extra inch of clearance and tried to pull her back again.  This time he was successful.  She was not hurt but very frightened.  She had been caught near the corner of the yard and immediately ran away from us and tried to go through the fence again, this time she bounced back.

Not to be dismayed she tried again a little further down the fence and again bounced back.  We, me one side and the animal control fellow on the other side, forced her to reconsider our fence.  She tried a neighbors fence but quickly realized there was a dog in that yard.  She did not want to deal with any dogs.

Then she decided to go back the way she came.  She was gone, not looking back at us at all.

I have seen a buck leap over the fence.  And we had to take one off a spear top fence across the way.  But the mature full size deer, male or female, can easily jump over the fence.  A yearling is just not big enough yet and still seems to have memories of squeezing though the bars.  She is now well aware she can not get through the fence anymore.

At least we did not have to euthanize her.  She lives to enjoy more days in the various yards and open spaces.  BTW our fence does not have the ornamental spear points on it because we did not want to remove any more deer off the fence.