Friday, November 07, 2008

The Worst has happened

If you have ever been to the Reserve, you know the most striking feature of it, besides the deer, is the 8 foot fencing that surrounds the 10 acres that protect the bucks from predators and keep them from the "wild" that holds many dangers for them...electric fences, highways, hunters, certain starvation in winter. As you know the fallow deer is not native to Canada and cannot survive without hay in the winter. These 13 bucks were rescued from a deer farm in 2005 and have been cared for by volunteers since.

In our worst nightmare, someone would come with bolt cutters or wire clippers and cut the fence for what reason we would not know. But since May 2007, we have had no incident and I guess we all started to believe that no one would be so callous or ignorant to do such a thing. Our neighbours were supportive.

Well the worst case scenario played out on November 6 when sometime between 5pm and 6am, the fence was cut and peeled back to allow 15 feet of open gate. At least 10 deer escaped and were spotted by a neighbour early in the morning. At present we have 7 deer in the reserve and there are 6 on the run. We have spotted three of them and are working on as many ways as we can think of to bring them to their home.

If you know anything about the people who did this, or if you are one of the persons who did this, we would like to know why? What purpose have you served? We thank you for not shooting the deer, but why put their lives in peril?

If you see any of the deer, please call (613) 386-1355 to report location, time and direction in which the buck was travelling.

With a great deal of sadness and worry,

The Deer Keepers

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Jenn Jilks said...

What a shame. People can really be stupid.

"Stupidity is the active pursuit of ignorance."

Maybe they are with the sweet wallaby that escaped after the tree fell on its pen.

Good luck!

Barbara Martin said...

I learned about your site from Jenny Jill. How awful for you and the deer. An animal lover myself, it appalls me how some people act towards others.

I hope you find them all and return them to your reserve. Perhaps you ought to put up some electric fence with a good ZAP to it, or alternatively a sensor light with a buzzer.