So I came home from work this morning to find a mother deer and its fairly young (still has spots, but is fairly tall for a baby) offspring hanging around the side of the house. Mother seemed cautious, but they're around humans enough in this area that they didn't bolt or anything. Baby was busy devouring some of the groundcover on our boarder with the neighbors. This is a pretty common sight and I didn't think anything of it.
Came home just now to find my 60 year-old neighbor just sitting on her porch crying and looking into the shallow wooded area behind my place. Apparently she had been watering her garden when this little dear (still had spots so I'm assuming it's the same one, but maybe it's a different one and that was just a coincidence) leapt out of some of her plants and ran into our woods. She said it was hobbling and when she got a good look at it she saw the entire right flank was flayed open, to the point where you could see the muscle and bone as it moved. She said it just stood in the woods shaking for a while. She called a cop to come put it down, but the moment his car showed up it apparently ran full speed into the woods and disappeared. We've seen it a couple times since I got home slowly and shakily wandering through the woods and sitting under my porch.
So now I'm sitting here not entirely sure how to proceed. I don't want to hurt the little thing, but I'm clearly not qualified to help it. I don't want to kill it, but it's also clearly suffering. The mother is no where to be found. I have a feeling they both tried jumping over a fence in one of our neighbor's yards and the mother made it over while the baby... didn't...
Sorry for the downer of a thread, just not really sure what to do since animal control isn't able to send anyone right now.
EDIT: Forgot I had footage of the baby and mother from this morning. Too dark to take video of this one tonight and way too graphic for me to want to.
Came home just now to find my 60 year-old neighbor just sitting on her porch crying and looking into the shallow wooded area behind my place. Apparently she had been watering her garden when this little dear (still had spots so I'm assuming it's the same one, but maybe it's a different one and that was just a coincidence) leapt out of some of her plants and ran into our woods. She said it was hobbling and when she got a good look at it she saw the entire right flank was flayed open, to the point where you could see the muscle and bone as it moved. She said it just stood in the woods shaking for a while. She called a cop to come put it down, but the moment his car showed up it apparently ran full speed into the woods and disappeared. We've seen it a couple times since I got home slowly and shakily wandering through the woods and sitting under my porch.
So now I'm sitting here not entirely sure how to proceed. I don't want to hurt the little thing, but I'm clearly not qualified to help it. I don't want to kill it, but it's also clearly suffering. The mother is no where to be found. I have a feeling they both tried jumping over a fence in one of our neighbor's yards and the mother made it over while the baby... didn't...
Sorry for the downer of a thread, just not really sure what to do since animal control isn't able to send anyone right now.
EDIT: Forgot I had footage of the baby and mother from this morning. Too dark to take video of this one tonight and way too graphic for me to want to.
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