Do be a deer and use the cat f lap!
WHEn he saw the body of a small deer lying by the side of a road, John Slater assumed it was dead.
But something made him stop to check on the stricken creature – and then it made a pitiful squeak.
Realising it was still alive, the 63-year- old loaded the infant muntjac deer into his car and nursed her back to health.
now the animal has become the latest addition to his growing number of pets – sharing the grandfather’s home with two dogs, a pony and a retired racing pigeon.
named Strawberry because of her huge appetite for the fruit, the deer is perfectly at home and is so small she can come and go as she pleases through the cat flap.
Like cats and dogs, three-year- old Strawberry enjoys being stroked. She sleeps in a little shed with the other animals in the back garden of Mr Slater’s home in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, but retreats underneath a blanket inside the house on cold winter nights.
Like wild muntjacs, she feasts on plants and fruit, including peaches, rose petals, leafy greens, dandelions and strawberries. Mr Slater, a grandfather of four, said: ‘If I’m sitting at the kitchen table watching telly she will chew my elbow until I start stroking her. When she’s out in the garden she’s very timid, and she will follow me round. I wouldn’t take her out anywhere else because if she escaped I’d never get her back.’ Widower Mr Slater shares the house with his 24-year-old son Tom, who was quickly won over by Strawberry.
‘He knows what a loony I am about animals and he’s fond of her as well,’ he said.
Strawberry was only a couple of months old when she was rescued, and Mr Slater stocked up on books with advice on how to care for her. He said he was driving up a steep hill in the Cotswolds when he saw the deer lying in a pool of blood.
He said: ‘I wish if you hit an animal you had to stop and check it was dead. If I could afford it and I had more money and land, I’d have a menagerie. I don’t know anyone else who’s got a deer as a pet. I’ve got the two dogs but she’s something different. I used to have a fox that would come round and I’d feed it but Strawberry wouldn’t be able to outrun it. It was luck, sheer luck, that I heard that tiny little squeak. I’m so glad I went back.’
Muntjac numbers have soared in recent years and there are now more than 150,000 in the UK. They were imported from China in the 1900s to grace Woburn Abbey, an estate belonging to the Duke of Bedford.