I can't make this animal story humorous, folks. There simply isn't anything to laugh about here. A bunch of people in suburban Chicago apparently thought it would be a really keen idea to feed and pet a deer in the area. They made him a sort of community pet. And this Disney-fied view of nature and how to interact with it led to an inevitable result.
A male deer with 4-inch antlers that obviously had been raised around people and had been busy this spring visiting various neighborhoods and parks in Mundelein where kids would pet it and approach it, was euthanized by police last week.
Some people said the deer was named "Lucky" or "Darwin," but for police and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, it was becoming a dangerous threat. It was living in the Colony and Long Meadows Estates neighborhoods.
Mundelein Chief Raymond Rose said that the problem with this deer was that it was still part wild animal.
"The problem with this one is as they get older and get into rutting season, they get very aggressive. Wild animals are meant to be wild. . . They never lose that instinct," Rose said Tuesday.
"We had seven calls about this deer. People were afraid of it when it started to go towards them aggressively. We actually had one guy tussle with the deer because it went after his 2-year-old daughter. Then it attacked him when he defended his daughter," Rose said.
He called the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and was told the deer would have to be taken out because it had been "imprinted" and lost its fear of humans. The IDNR offered to have its people come in, track and kill it if police could not find the animal and euthanize it.
"It was a safety concern, especially males when they start rutting," Rose said, referring to the periods when male deer become sexually aggressive and will fight for territory and female deer.
The IDNR also pointed out that deer ticks, the size of a "period," carry Lyme disease, a serious disease, and they can also harbor fleas, lice, rabies and round worm.
"They are cute until someone ends up getting hurt,"
Here's a tip to bonehead "animal lovers": leave the animals alone. Do not feed them, do not pet them, just leave them alone. If you want to pet an animal get a dog or go to a petting zoo. Because when you interfere with a wild animal like this, you are habituating them to humans – and virtually guaranteeing that they will need to be put down or will simply get killed in some other way. I remember one jerk back in Illinois who "loved" deer so much that he put salt blocks out for them in his backyard so he could watch them out his windows. There were always a large number of car-deer accidents every year in front of his house. These inevitably resulted in the deer dying, sometimes quickly, sometimes in slow agony.
Leave the animals alone.
The Disney Effect. I used to get furious when my roommate wanted to watch “Grizzly Adams,” because I knew–and I’m still certain–that the “be kind to the animals and they’ll be kind to you” philosophy would get people killed. And wouldn’t help the animals in the long run either.
Much nonsense would be avoided if we could all move back to the farm.