A new mascot?

A decision was made soon after that someone should take the deer home with them. Hartle said he would do it.

“Well at 1:30 in the morning there is not a whole heck of a lot of places you can take something like this. I had the yard and the ability to accommodate something like that. It wasn't an easy task, but pretty cool,” he said.

Hartle spent the rest of the morning taking care of the young deer.

“I bottle fed it, let it walk around, drove it around in the truck to help put it to sleep,” he said.

Hartle and his girlfriend even allowed the small deer to sleep in the bed with them.

“It just laid there. It was like a regular pet. It was licking my face and kind of making little noises. I was just cuddling with it,” said Brandi Olson, Hartle’s girlfriend.

Later in the morning, Hartle turned the deer over to conservation officers, who in turn found the deer a foster home.

“These are people who have rehabilitated fawns in the past, that would be willing to take them on a temporary term until the fawn is ready to be returned to the wild,” said Bonnie Greene, conservation officer.

Green said young deer require quite a lot of maintenance. They require a considerable amount of milk, fairly often throughout the day.

“They have about a 75 per cent survival rate for these situations. So it is fairly optimistic for this little guy,” said Greene.

nmaxwell@panow.com

by Nigel Maxwell

A new mascot?

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