We’ve received two separate reports of the urban deer visiting block parties in the Leschi area last night. Commenter Mary Alyce saw them at Irving & Yakima, and reader Brenda emailed us about seeing them enter Sam Smith park above I-90 last night as well.
Evidently they headed west from there, following the park along I-90. We heard the scanner broadcast a few minutes ago about a deer spotting at Rainier & Charles. We went down to investigate, and found a small crowd watching them in the industrial area to the west of Rainier.
We found the two small deer simultaneously grazing, panting, and cowering inside a small area that is surrounded by 6′ high chain link fence. Deer can jump upwards of 12 feet high, so they’re probably not trapped. But I-90 is directly behind them, and onlookers were worried about them suddenly darting onto the freeway.
Another member of the crowd was concerned about them getting water, given the heat and their panting, and there was talk of bringing over a big bucket of water to get them hydrated.
A police officer was also on hand, but he said that the city’s policy is very hands-off when it comes to wildlife, even for deer that. Emailer Brenda says she contacted the wildlife department this morning, saying “their advice to everyone is to not approach or try to interfere. Just let them go wherever there going”.
Update: We just realized that neither of these deer are the same as the one spotted by kiacharon last month, as that was a buck with a growing rack of antlers, while these are antlerless lady deer.
Does anyone know if the city is working on getting rid of these deer? Given the “animal rights” driven reluctant attitude people have in this city about doing anything to fix problems we’re going to see a serious problem when that buck finds that fawn.
I saw these two deer at 34th Ave. S. and S. Lander about 7 a.m. on Tuesday morning.
I ran into these two outside my house this morning around 7:15 on the 1700 block of 25th Ave S. – they were grazing on the trees and shrubs, then got scared and ran north up the street.
I don’t know if these are the same deer, but I spotted a group of three crossing the street yesterday morning on NE 97th in Kirkland. Didn’t get a close look at them, but they looked like female deer.
Here’s the location on Google Maps:
http://www.google.com/maps?q=&num=1&t=h&vps=14&jsv=262a&sll=
Buck was spotted at 5am on Corner of 33rd and College in July. Sorry I don’t have a date, other then it was a Thursday
Last tues Aug 3rd. I sent pics to the Mt Baker CC. good sized ones we saw.