‘LIKE A FISH IN A NET’
Large deer freed from soccer net at Coxheath walking track
A normally quiet and routine walk earlier this week unexpectedly turned into a frantic race against time to save the life of a wild animal in distress.
Eugene and Denise Simon were just beginning their morning stroll at the Coxheath walking track on Sunday morning when some unusual sounds off in the distance drew their attention.
What their eyes showed them was a very large female deer tangled in one of the soccer nets at the field and struggling for its life.
“The wife is scared of animals and she thought it might have been a coyote. It was really big inside of the net when I looked over,” said Eugene.
“I just stopped and said ‘let’s have a look. She’s stuck and she’s panicking.”
A closer look revealed a very large and very tired doe caught up in the netting wrapped around its head, throat and legs.
“The panicked look in the white part of the eye, that’s what I looked at right away. It was scared it was going to die.”
The Simon’s estimated the deer was there for several hours and was about to lose consciousness when they and four other people at the walking track that morning decided to act.
“All the rope was around her and around her neck,” said Denise. “When I saw her I thought she was dead because she wasn’t even moving.”
Others in the area told the Simons the Department of Natural Resources had been called, but not knowing when that help would arrive, they decided to act on their own.
While another man began to comfort the doe, Eugene ran to nearby houses for assistance and returned with a knife to begin cutting the net.
Despite the best of intentions, the deer was frightened and her struggles posed some danger to its rescuers.
“The man that was holding that animal down got hit in the hand with a hoof. It kind stung him but he was good.”
Eugene said the trapped animal was “like a fish in a net” and difficult to free even before it started struggling. They all stayed with the process, though, and the animal eventually began to relax until it was successfully released. Malcolm Lewis is shown comforting a large deer while others try to cut it out. The deer was discovered trapped in the net early Sunday morning.
“She could see us and the man was soothing it, rubbing its neck and as we got the net more off his legs, he actually lifted its head without the guy covering its head. It looked at us, glanced at us all and walked away. It was a crazy morning.”
The Simons said their compassion for animals was one of the reasons they decided to act that day. The thought of children finding the animal in that condition was another.
“When they released the animal, the poor thing must have
been so exhausted because he could hardly run,” said Denise.
“I’m just so glad it worked out OK. It just made my day to see her running off like that and going back into her home.”
How the animal ended up in the net is a bit of a mystery, but Eugene suspects a coyote could have chased it in there or perhaps it was spooked by the 100 or so geese often seen in the area.