Bash greets Roland
Gulliver (r) greets Diane
At yesterday's Open Gate, Gulliver had a chance to say hello to his co-sponsor, Diane, who dropped by just before she heads to France to visit her twin grandsons, Alexandre and Edouard, who join her as co-sponsors of Gulliver.
A group from Ongwanada also joined us to help with feeding the deer, as well as a father and his two sons, Gilbert and Roland.
A telephone call last Thursday came from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (www.myfwc.com) who had been searching for some advice on feeding fallow deer on the Net. Of course, because we are on Florida Road, we came up close to the top! Also our interest in feeding the animals is for the sake of the animal, not the venison. We were happy to share our knowledge.
Bambi Ferree, an officer with the Commission, has been charged with looking after a solo male fallow deer who had been found on Florida's Panhandle "on the loose", tranquilized and brought to the Gainesville lab/area for testing about a week ago. She lives closest to the Lab, so she's become an instant deer keeper! Yes, she does get kidded about her name often, especially as she is researching brain wasting disease in white tail deer. If the buck passes all his health tests, he will be adopted, Bambi hopes. Potential adoptees are the family that found him, as no one in Florida USA has reported a missing buck. Because deer don't tend to roam too far away from the place of birth, we assume that he was from the northern part of Florida and kept without permit.
We shared with her the feeding program we have for our bucks which seems to be working well. From her description, "Panhandle" seems to be about the same age as our deer George and EGee. His antlers are in velvet and are about 15 inches in length already.
We are going to keep in touch and hope that Pan gets a good, safe place to live out his days.
Bash greets Roland
Gulliver (r) greets Diane
