People in the house, deer in the garage

Posted 2:30 p.m.

Damian Olthoff was helping unload trucks full of evacuees as they shuffled over the flooded out West Lake Houston Bridge Tuesday, where only dump trucks and military vehicles could pass, when a man volunteering near him called out in surprise.

“Look at this; someone just handed me a deer,” the man said.

People had been handing bags, pets, and anything else they could ferry over the bridge, to members of the bucket-brigade lineup of volunteers, as Humble residents hurried to evacuate as many neighbors from rising floodwaters as they could.

But no one expected a baby deer to be among the dump-truck haul.

Olthoff forgot about the deer for the next several hours, focusing instead on the people he could help.

Then, when the last truck passed over, and the volunteers began peeling away to go home, Olthoff saw the baby deer again — now in a dog cage, flanked by volunteers in search of a dry place for the fawn to spend the night.

Olthoff’s family of five had already opened its doors to several neighbors that night. All told, they were serving as shelter for 15 people, two dogs and a cat. At that point, why not add a deer? Or two, actually — the Olthoffs took in an adult deer as well.

“The big one’s head was shaking up and down and it couldn’t blink,” says Olthoff. “It was scared and we couldn’t get it to eat. But when we gave it a chance to walk away, it did.”

The baby deer needed a bit more help though.

“It wasn’t doing good, and the vet didn’t think it was going to make it,” he says. “It was cold and wet and it had a bunch of injuries: Its face was scraped up, and its shoulder hurt.”

Lucky for the deer, he stumbled into the home of a former zookeeper, Olthoff’s wife, Laura. She got straight to work.

She consulted a vet, who told her to put honey around the fawn’s gums in an effort to raise its blood sugar level. All they had in their hurricane pantry was agave, so they gave it a whirl. Nothing. “It wouldn’t take a bottle,” Laura Olthoff says. So she started spoonfeeding the fawn milk. In a perfect world, she would have used vitamin-rich, room-temperature milk. As it was, all they had to offer was a carton of refrigerated skim. But Laura Olthoff let it sit on the counter to get it warm, and kept trying.

“The first time I tried to feed her, there was no reaction. She was so stressed out. Her eyes were completely shut. And even when she tried to open her eyes, she wasn’t responsive at all,” she says.

She moved the cars out of their garage, and moved the deer in there, where it could get warm. Then, a couple hours later, she tried feeding the fawn again, this time with the help of the Olthoff’s 8-year-old daughter, who charmed the deer into drinking.

During the night, she continued checking on the fawn. When she opened the dog kennel to let it out, the deer wobbled forth, right to the willow tree the family had tucked away for safety in the storm. It stripped all the bark and leaves it could from the low, reachable parts.

“I was so glad to see that. It could eat without milk and it could feed on its own, which meant we’d be able to set it free the next day,” Laura Olthoff says. And that’s just what they did. “It stepped out of the crate and started going down our driveway,” she says.

And then it frolicked away, back into the woods around the suburban subdivision. Safe, fed, and warmer than it had been the day before.