A Dear Ending to Orphaned Deer's Story

Baby, the orphaned deer adopted by a group of Pleasant Ridge neighbors who worried about the young doe’s safety, has a new home.

Likely born in June and orphaned a few weeks later when her mother was hit in traffic, Baby was tranquilized Monday morning and transported to the E.L. Johnson Nature Center in Bloomfield Hills, the Detroit Free Press reports.

“I love you and you’re going to love your new life,” Tracy Leigh Magiera whispered to the deer as she said goodbye. “What a wonderful life you’re gonna have.”

Magiera has been Baby’s chief caretaker, making sure the deer has had enough to eat during the past few months.

Tom Treuter, a photographer and Pleasant Ridge resident who helped coordinate the move, said the deer’s relocation to the nature center is, “the best possible result of all the things that could have happened.”

Living outside of a sanctuary, Treuter and others who kept tabs of Baby’s whereabouts worried she would meet a fate similar to her mother. “Her staying where she was and being an urban deer, nobody saw a good outcome here,” he said.

At the Johnson Nature Center, part of the Bloomfield Hills school district, Baby is sharing a 100-square-foot pen with another deer, Summer.
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“It’s not huge,” Dan Badgley, manager of the nature center, told MLive, “but big enough for them to run around and get exercise.”

When they were introduced, Summer and Baby sniffed and rubbed heads.

“Summer was very curious, and Baby was very curious,” Magiera said.

Everyone who developed affection for the deer over the past several months thinks the relocation is Baby’s best chance for survival.

“She is where she needs to be. She doesn’t need to be living at (I-)696 and Woodward, for sure,” Magiera told the Free Press. “What a wonderful day this is.”

» Watch a video of the relocation made by Bloomfield Hills students on Facebook.

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Screenshot of video via Bloomfield Hills Schools Facebook page.