Barrhead man saves life of baby deer
Farm experience and ‘instinct’ made for successful roadside rescue
A B.C. fawn is healthy and “drinking her bottle like a champion” after a passing Alberta man calmly saved her life by performing an emergency caesarean section on her dying mother.
“Yeah, it was pretty much instinct and curiosity; see what’s in there,” said Sean Steele, a resident of Barrhead, who, fittingly, runs a steel fabrication company.
On Friday, Steele and his wife were en route to a coastal B.C. fishing trip when, just outside Smithers, they saw the vehicle ahead of them hit a doe.
Noticing that the injured deer was still alive, Steele pulled over.
Then, he got his hunting knife and walked over to perform the grim task of putting the suffering animal out of its misery. But, as he got close, he saw the baby peeking out from a tear in her mother’s side.
“(The doe) wasn’t feeling very good and was kind of cut open, and that’s when I seen the leg of the fawn,” said Steele, speaking by phone from Prince Rupert, B.C.
Acting “on instinct,” Steele cut the fawn from its mother. A veteran of several calf deliveries, he then wiped the baby deer down with his sweater, cleared out her air channels with his fingers and
We are happy to report that the fawn seems to be unharmed and is drinking her bottle like a champion.
even sprinkled grass onto her nose to get her to sneeze.
Tickling a newborn ungulate’s nasal passage is standard procedure on a cattle farm, as it encourages the animal to breathe by clearing mucus from its airways.
The Steeles then set off to find a source of colostrum, the highprotein milk produced by pregnant mammals immediately after they have given birth.
The search quickly led to the nearby Northern Lights Wildlife Society, which took in the fawn for rehabilitation.
“We are happy to report that the fawn seems to be unharmed and is drinking her bottle like a champion,” read a Saturday Facebook post from the society, noting that the new arrival had initially attempted to suckle from another baby deer that was sharing her pen.
The fawn has already been moved to an outdoor enclosure and is scheduled for release back into the wild by the fall.
Steele said his wife has named the fawn “Friday Steele.”
An experienced hunter, he also said he planned to take meat from the fawn’s mother, rather than letting it go to waste — but had second thoughts because of the presence of the occupants of the other car.
“I didn’t think it was a good idea with that woman standing there to go and take off the tenderloins,” said Steele.
Incredibly, amateur roadside C-sections are not unprecedented in rural Canada, not even for animals taken in by the Smithers-based Northern Lights Wildlife Society.
Spokeswoman Angelika Langen said the centre has cared for a litter of baby hares a motorist had cut out of their mother after she was killed on the road.
“People seem to think about these things,” she said.