Oh dear!

I'm moving some my older blogs from my MySpace page to over this page I figure it would be easier to use Blogger. This is from December 22, 2008

Oh deer! Is exactly what I thought on Wednesday night while walking Elwood up to the school for his run. I kept him on his leash a little longer than I normally do and I'm glad I did. I was just about ready to let him off his leash I looked up in shadow about 40 feet away there was a doe staring right out us.

I looked like a deer in headlights so did the deer, he wasn't moving which I thought was very odd for wildlife. I decided to walk further down the road hoping the deer would go away but NOPE! It followed us down the road and got within 15 feet of us. All I could think about was that Elwood and I were going to be on the 11 o'clock news telling our story how we were mauled by a deer. The deer was finally spooked by a pasting car and slowly left the area. Today I did find out why the deer didn't run, it's someone pet.

Here's the news article my dad sent me today about it:

I swear the doe was twice the size when I ran into her!

Shippensburg man lassos deer
By Dale Heberlig, Sentinel Reporter, December 22, 2007
A Neff Avenue resident captured a deer Wednesday night, using a rope lasso to collar the wayward doe just a block from where a buck caused an uproar Nov. 5 when it burst through the front door of a house, slammed into a plate glass window at a convenience store and hurdled a 6-foot-high fence into the playground at McDonald's.The deer that wandered into Wayland Stouffer's back yard in the 400 block of East Neff Avenue Wednesday was an unusual-looking critter with a different temperament than the panicked buck from six weeks ago.Judy, a piebald deer — marked with a white face, lower body and legs and blue eyes — resembles an enormous goat at first glance and is as close to a family pet as a wild animal can get.Judy walked away from her pen at a deer farm south of Shippensburg 11 days earlier. The doe is pregnant, having been artificially inseminated Nov. 7.

Bill Noll says he raised the 9-year-old doe from birth, housing her in a playpen in his house when she was a fawn."She's like a member of the family," Noll says of the remarkable recovery of his animal. "Thank God she didn't get run over by a car or get shot."Noll says he saw Judy walk out of her pen Dec. 8 — the last Saturday of Pennsylvania's deer season — when the gate was inadvertently left open."She walked out into the field, and we thought we could go out and just walk her back, but she took off," Noll recalls.

He says he spent three-and-half hours following the deer and searching for her after she mingled with a herd of wild deer.Judy walked south along Route 11, Noll says, then crossed the highway and trekked east across fields to the vicinity of Interstate 81, where his "pet" mingled with wild deer.That's the last he saw her — until Wednesday night, when she materialized out the gloom near Stouffer's home more than three miles away."I'd kind of given up on ever getting her back," Noll says. "I'd left the gate to her pen open in case she came back and went out every morning and evening with a spotlight to see if I could see her."Noll says he even contacted taxidermists to see if any hunter had killed the deer and brought her to be mounted."I just thank God she's back," he says. "I don't need any other gift for Christmas."Stouffer says he spotted the deer about 8 p.m., when his mother and son returned home from a trip to get a Christmas tree."Mom was yelling 'There's a deer out here!' and I went out to take a look," Stouffer says. "Sure enough, it was a deer. I went back inside to get shoes and the kids were asking me, 'What are you going to do?' I said I didn't know yet."Stouffer grabbed a length of heavy rope, fashioned a lasso and got the upper hand when Judy walked between two rows of cars parked in a church parking lot."The cars had tinted windows and she couldn't see me, but I could see her," Stouffer says. "I waited at the end of a car and when she poked her head out, I threw the rope over her head."

Judy resisted furiously, "jumping up in the air six or seven feet," but he was able to hang on, and the deer calmed down a little as he talked to her.A bag of carrots hastened Judy's cooling off, and things were under control when wildlife officer Eric Horsh arrived and helped figure out where Judy belonged.In hindsight, Stouffer says, he may have been a little careless in his capture of the deer, "but once I got a look at her, I just had a feeling that she belonged to someone, and I didn't want her to get hit by a car."Noll couldn't be happier, and he says Judy is obviously content, too.He's been feeding Judy sweet treats — a blend of deer feed and molasses — to restore any weight she may have lost during her 11-day adventure."She's happy to be home," Noll says. "She's licking my neck and pulling at my shirt and beard, and there's not on a mark on her that I can find."If all goes well, Judy should deliver her fawn by Memorial Day.