by Shawn Skipper - Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Whitetails can wind up in some funny places, particularly during the rut, but it's not often that you'll find a pair of young bucks going for a swim in a cistern.
That's the scene that Wickliffe, Ohio police officers were called to earlier this month. According to reports, students from nearby Telshe Yeshiva's Beren Campus were walking through the woods behind their dormitories, and came across a pair of bucks fighting for dominance. Given the time of year, that's not at all uncommon. What happened next, though, was. Caught up in their duel, the pair inadvertently tumbled into a nearby cistern, which was full enough leave the deer afloat, but not full enough to let them drag themselves back to dry land. A scene straight out of your favorite action movie, almost, where hero and villain halt their battle for the sake of survival.
The good Samaritans called local police, and an officer was dispatched. He sought backup and, in time, officials were able to use a rope and some good old-fashioned elbow grease to drag both bucks to safety.
As you might imagine, the two deer were completely exhausted from the ordeal. And when I say exhausted, I mean that my girlfriend's cat would have put up more of a fight than these two did. That did make things easy for rescuers, though, who, thanks to the "cooperation" they received, had little trouble getting the deer to dry land, untying their rope and sending the animals on their way. The first buck to come out of the cistern actually just stood prone next to officers for some time, trying to recover his strength. The second was more determined to get out of dodge, but did so on notably wobbly legs.
You can get a complete look at the action in the video embedded above, or by checking out the Wickliffe Police Department Facebook page. The image below shows the pair's plight, and was screen captured from the original video.
