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Oh deer! Latest wild residents find city life can be tough
Last updated at 09:37am on 02.10.06
Our collage of pictures show deer in urban areas including a swimming pool in Ibstone, Bucks (top) and muntjac deer in Aylesbury, Bucks, (bottom).
Forget foxes - here are the latest wild creatures to arrive in town.
Increasing numbers of deer - usually shy animals - are being found in gardens, car parks and even swimming pools. But, as these pictures show, some have yet to adapt to urban life.
Animal rescue charity and hospital Tiggywinkles has seen call-outs to injured deer rise by more than a quarter this year.
Les Stocker, co-founder of the hospital in Aylesbury, said: "We have had 301 deer casualties since the start of the year, of which 235 were in road accidents.
"But I've rescued four from water, including one in the Thames.
"We got a call from a guy near High Wycombe who'd woken up to find a fallow deer in his swimming pool. There were apples on the pool cover and the deer walked over the top and went straight through to the water. She must have been there for three or four hours by the time he found her."
Deer have been reported in Watford, Ruislip, Hendon and Enfield and the centres of Oxford and Reading. Most are fallow, roe or muntjac, but some are rarer types such as Chinese water deer that have fled captivity and started breeding.
Mr Stocker said: "There are more deer in the country so they are spreading and colonising areas they have not been found in before. They are becoming real townies. We get quite a few in people's gardens."
He rescued a muntjac deer that scrambled 20 feet down a steep slope beside Reading station and became trapped in an abandoned car park. Office workers had been throwing bananas to stop it starving.
Others get trapped in fences and often need to have a leg amputated when freed. A herd of 40 threelegged deer roam the charity's land.
"It's amazing how they get into the most ridiculous places," said Mr Stocker. "They are very scattish animals and don't really think. They do everything by instinct and just go where the food is."
Reader views (2)
Well, us Surrey yokels are quite used to having to chase these animals out of our gardens, but no doubt, it will be a novelty to Londoners. No doubt, Londoners will call for police marksmen to 'do something' about the problem, and the mothers in their 4x4s will use the presence of deer as further justification for their choice of car (perhaps adding bull bars - just in case) to ferry little Tarquin around. My suggestion? Well, if they start to get out of control, you can feed them to your rabid Rottweilers!
- Paul Ebhart, Guildford
If they're arriving all over the city, obviously panic at the first sign of people and are being described as 'scattish' by those in the know, one has to question whether its wise to be 'rescuing' them. Surely an animal on the loose the size of a deer with apparent IQ of a tree stump is a danger to the public?
- Neil, Notting Hill
