The Buck Has Gone Free

 

A few weeks ago I told you about the buck deer which had been brought to us. He had been badly injured on the Don Valley parkway, down by Front Street, and the Toronto Humane Society young people had tranquillized him, loaded him into their van and brought him all the way to Muskoka. There was no one in Toronto to look after him.

 

Anyway, he has been set free.

 

Healthy, very able, and hopefully, much wiser; he will have learned one or two lessons. First that highways, where humans drive frantically and. so often, carelessly, are very dangerous places. Secondly, we hope he has realized that deer, living anywhere near that great City, should not follow the wooded ravines down into the places where humans live. No matter how green, how filled with food grazing, no matter how lonely they seem, those ravines lead right down into the heart of the city – that place where the most dangerous predator on the face of the earth congregates. However, the law states we had to take him somewhere back down there.

 

So, once again, at Aspen Valley, he was tranquillized, and slipped into a carrying crate and into the back of our van. Because he was asleep he perhaps could not realize he was being taken away from hundreds of acres of quiet wilderness, the normal and safer habitat of deer, - the place where he had spent weeks of recovery – to within range of the roaring city. not in it, of course – but near enough. The law. We couldn’t explain to him.

 

Friends of ours have a huge farm north of the City, a few hundred acres of almost wilderness, some pasture land, some under cultivation. That farm is surrounded by others who really care about wildlife, and had no wish for the deer to be returned to dangers of the Don Valley Parkway. Tony drove quickly, ( and carefully), Jai had her camera with her, Ben monitored the tranquillized deer – and the trip went well. When they finally drove down the laneway to the farm, the deer was waking – and the people from the THS were waiting to see their deer go free. The TV cameras which had recorded his sojourn at Aspen Valley were there, too. They had sent the story of his injury around the world – now the story of his freedom would go, too.

 

They drove to the most remote part of the farm, stopped – and Tony and Ben lifted the carrier from the van. When they set in on the ground, the deer lifted his head and, as though sensing freedom, tried to struggle to his feet.

They opened the gate, and he eased himself out, and stood up – wobbly at first and then, after a step or too, gaining more balance. He looked beyond the people, beyond the cameras, and moved out – away toward the fields, and a distant row of bushes – without a backward glance – away, more steady with each step.

 

Then he gained the shelter of the bushes, far away from the people, and stood quietly for a few moments. As the people watched him, he began to move away.

 

Then, hidden from humans, he laid down. A new part of his, life had begun.

The whisper of the highways was far far away – we could only hope that he understood.