By: JV Staff
Whoever said that unusual four-legged creatures never make their way into the bowels of Brooklyn is dead wrong. On Tuesday afternoon, the New York Post reported that a wild white-tailed deer was on the loose in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn; near Ocean Parkway and Avenue S.
Police were called to the scene, but the buck ran amok from property to property even after cops tried to sedate the Staten Island native with a dart.
The first ones to receive multiple calls from local residents about the stray deer were the Flatbush Shomrim.
The NY Post reported that photos at the scene showed cops running after the oversized Bambi as it continued skipping along its merry way. At approximately 2:30 pm, the NYPD reported that they were able to pen the deer in a mounted transport truck, according to the Post report.
An NYPD spokesman said that the tags that were hanging from the buck’s ears, apparently placed there as part of the City’s deer vasectomy program, allowed authorities to “bring him back to where he belongs.”
No one knows how the deer made its way from Staten Island to Brooklyn, but this is not the first deer sighting in the county of Kings. Over the last few years deer have been sighted near Coney Island and other venues in Brooklyn.
It’s unclear how the animal made it from Staten Island to Brooklyn, but many speculate that it swam. Due to an excessively large deer population on Staten Island many deer have run out of places to find food and are heading elsewhere for sustenance.
In July of this year, the Staten Island Advance reported that the parks department was shrinking the budget for the borough’s deer vasectomy program due to the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus.
The Advance reported in July that the $6.6 million program, now in its fifth year, was designed to trim Staten Island’s ever growing deer population through sterilization. The program will now be delayed until June of 2021.
City officials said they simply can’t afford it for now.
“During these unprecedented times, we have been tasked with making difficult decisions especially as it pertains to our budget,” Parks Department spokeswoman Charisse Hill told the outlet.
“We have temporarily placed our successful deer sterilization contract on hold for FY21 along with cutting some deer and other wildlife-related marketing expenses. This totals $700,000.”
