Residents Adopt Fawn - And She Adopts Them

As a cold winter begins to settle in, residents of the Oakland County suburb of Pleasant Ridge are fretting about Baby.

Will Baby be warm and have enough to eat? Will her friendliness spell her end? Will she stay out of traffic?

Baby is a white-tail deer fawn, likely born in June and orphaned a few weeks after when her mother was hit in traffic, WXYZ-TV, Channel 7, reports.

Since they heard the plaintive bleating of a fawn alone in the world, residents of Pleasant Ridge have adopted her – and she them. She trots behind them on jogging trails, frolicks with their dogs and has even licked Tracy Leigh Magiera’s hand a few times, the Detroit Free Press reports.

“She wants a family,” Magiera told WXYZ.

Magiera has assumed responsibility for making sure that Baby gets fed the rations residents of the suburb of 2,500 have donated. She eats deer pellets, carrots, beets, pumpkin, corn and other treats.

Mayor Kurt Metzger said the community is on around-the-clock “Baby watch.” Deer aren’t common in the area, and “people have been following her exploits for quite a while now,” he said.

“Everybody’s worried she’s gonna go out in the road,” Metzger said. “There is a Baby watch at all times. She ventures into someone’s yard, they take a picture and post it.”

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Baby’s fearlessness about humans is worrisome as well.

“One of the things that worries me are all the people and kids getting too close, trying to run up to her and take photos,” Alicia Gbur, told Oakland County One-Fifteen. “It’s completely ridiculous just witnessing these people trying to take photos with Baby and their kids and getting too close to her. She is still a wild animal and that should be respected. … I’m afraid someone’s going to scare her into traffic.”

Magiera worries about that, too. The area where she lives, near I-696 and Woodward, “is no place for a deer.”

Magiera said she has reached out to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Detroit Zoo to relocate the now young doe whose white spots have begun to fade, but they’ve turned her down. She’s looked into a deer sanctuary near Fowlerville, but said no one is willing to tranquilize Baby so she can be moved.

Belle Island, a Metropark or Up North are also possibilities because Baby would be able to run with other deer, but she could also be hunted Up North, a prospect Metzger said would rile residents who have rallied around the deer.

For now, it looks like Baby will be wintering in Pleasant Ridge, where residents are talking of building a shelter.

“I can guarantee this deer will be taken care of,” Metzger said, “if she lets Pleasant Ridge take care of her.”

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Screenshot via WXYZ-TV