Last weekend, residents at the Doncaster Village Apartments in Parkville, Maryland, noticed that one of their regular cervine visitors was sporting an unusual accessory. It was not an early Halloween costume: A young male deer had gotten his head stuck in a blue trick-or-treat pail.
Bob Swensen—the founder of Ellicott City-based Lost Animal Resource Group, which typically leads searches for missing dogs and cats—is at the helm of a community effort to track down the ensnared buck, the Washington Post reported Friday. The pursuit has so far required thermal drones, an elaborate ghillie suit, and the aid of a professional lassoer. It turns out that wrangling one of planet Earth’s most skittish creatures is not for the faint of heart, but these volunteers are pressing on.
The deer is what old hands call a “button buck”—his antlers have not yet fully developed, so in their place, he has two fur-covered nubbins. The handle of the Halloween pail is hanging from these nubbins and the bucket itself is blocking his snout, making it impossible for him to eat or drink water. Depending on the position of his head, it sometimes covers his eyes.
The initial plan was “to kind of just tackle him and then rip [the bucket] off of his head,” Swensen tells Washingtonian. Neighbors and other wildlife experts gathered in a small wooded area of the apartment complex where deer like to eat, but all the commotion deterred them from grazing at all. Swensen has enlisted the help of somebody who can hit the buck with a tranquilizer dart, but the team has to find him first; he hasn’t shown up on drone footage since Sunday.
“With the search and the people around, I think we spooked them a little bit,” Swensen says. “We want them to feel safe, we want them to come back to their normal routine. So we’re calling off the physical search. I’ll go out with my drone once a day or so, and then see what we can find. But unfortunately, it’s going to be a little bit of a time game.”
A zookeeper from the National Zoo has joined the search, offering her guidance on deer behavior. Swensen has positioned trail cameras throughout the area to get a sense of the local deer population’s typical activity. Fortunately, he hasn’t spotted any predators. The buck has mostly been seen in the company of another deer—presumably his mom or another young male—which should provide him with some support. The primary concerns are dehydration and starvation. Some experts have advised Swensen that deer can go as long as a couple of weeks without food or water, but the time crunch makes it all the more worrisome that nobody has had eyes on him for nearly 24 hours. “He has clearly gotten weaker in the past couple days. We were out in the woods, trying to corral him and get a net over him, and he would run and jump a little bit,” Swensen says. “And then he would get tuckered out because he hasn’t had food for a little over a week now.”
Today, Swensen is plastering signs around the Baltimore County area—the design won’t deviate much from the flyers he’s used to distributing for missing house pets, featuring a photo of the deer and his phone number (410-458-5077) to call with any sightings. “If anybody sees him, just leave him alone, but call my number,” he tells locals. “Do not approach.”
