On the streets of Kenora, Ontario, Canada, there are often herds of white-tailed deer wandering, and some even choose to stay there for a long time, getting along with people in friendliness and peace.
Carrots are such a deer, and when it was a fawn in 2017, it came to the lawn of Lee-Anne Carver's house, and Carver immediately liked it.
It is gentle and friendly, loves to be in contact with people, and seems to be different from other deer, even Carver's golden retrievers like it. Carver thought it was incredible, she was a wildlife photographer who had been in close contact with hundreds of deer, but this deer was absolutely the most special, and she named it Carrot.
Carrots often appear in Carver's yard, but on December 9, when her husband went out to see if the deer had arrived, he rushed into the house with a crying voice and said incoherently that the carrot had an arrow on his head.
When Carver went out to see it, he felt very heartbroken, and a carbon fiber arrow with a green tail passed through the carrot's brain near the antlers and drilled out from under the ear, which was shocking. The wound did not bleed and seemed to avoid large arteries and vital organs.
In 2016, due to the large number of white-tailed deer, the city of Kenora passed a resolution allowing people to shoot deer that appeared in the city with bows and arrows, but Carrot was never told that there was such a fatal resolution. It may have been shot from a window, but escaped in time to carver's yard for help.
Carver made an emergency call and the Department of Natural Resources and Forestry, and after receiving assurances that the carrots would not be euthanized, told them about the carrots, hoping to get their help. Experts initially suggested leaving the arrow on its head and waiting for it to fall off naturally, because there is currently no sign of infection in the carrot, and the arrow seems to have no effect on it, and the arrow will fall off when the antlers fall off in two or three months. Taking arrows or cutting arrows may cause carbon fiber to enter its body, causing infection and endangering its life.
Carver built a page on social media for Carrot, and many people shed tears of sympathy for Carrot's misfortune. Experts also warn people not to take arrows from carrots without permission, because white-tailed deer are wild animals after all, and their legs are very strong, which may cause harm to people who try to do so.
Staff at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry later decided to remove the arrow from the carrot if it was not removed from its head, which could lead to further injuries to it, and decided to remove it under anesthesia. The first anesthesia on Wednesday didn't work, the carrot ran away, and the next day the staff finally calmed it down and, under the guidance of a veterinarian in Ottawa 2,000 kilometers away, successfully pulled out the carbon fiber arrow, and the carrot did not bleed.
After the staff treated the wound for it, they cautiously optimistic that carrots would fully recover. But then the carrot's wound oozed pus and its tongue turned blue, which made its fate very uncertain, people speculated that the sedatives may have caused the fatal reaction, and people on social media were also very worried about the carrot, afraid that it would not pass this level. Many children even say that they will save carrots with the money they have accumulated, and when they grow up, they will become veterinarians themselves.
After the sedative had taken effect, the carrot woke up and slowly walked into the forest, where Carver didn't see it again for days. She braved the freezing cold of minus 22 degrees Celsius and drove around looking for them, and on Monday she saw more than a dozen crows in a tree, and she was suddenly worried, but after careful examination, there were no animal carcasses in the area. When she returned after sunrise, she finally saw a herd of deer on the side of the road, and she called out to carrots, and one of them trotted all the way over and kept licking her hand.
The carrots have finally survived! It may be the unluckiest deer in the world, but it is also the luckiest.
However, the relationship between humans and white-tailed deer is actually very delicate.
The white-tailed deer is the smallest deer species in North America, with a shoulder height of about 1 meter and a weight of 40 to 130 kilograms, with females smaller than males and larger differences.
White-tailed deer are widely distributed in the world, from the forests of eastern Canada to the eastern forests of the United States, the Florida Peninsula, Mexico, Central American countries, all the way to northern Peru.
Yet it was such a successful species that it was historically threatened with extinction, and in the 1930s there were only about 300,000 white-tailed deer left in the United States due to human hunting. White-tailed deer were then heavily protected and regulated for planned hunting, and by 2005, they had grown to 30 million in the United States.
This makes them unpopular in the minds of many people because they destroy crops, fruits and vegetables. The most criticized thing is that they like to cross the road to cause traffic accidents, endanger their own and people's safety, and cause huge economic losses. Deer-related traffic accidents, from 200,000 in 1980, grew to 2.4 million in 2008 and 2009, resulting in 300 deaths and $7 billion in economic losses. Between mid-2016 and mid-2017, there were 1.34 million incidents, with an average of one in 162 drivers having fatal intimate contact with a deer.
Of particular concern is the fact that deer's natural predators, wolves, cougars, bears, bobcats and coyotes, the development of white-tailed deer is becoming more and more uncontrolled, the dangers and damage caused by it and the economic losses are also increasing, and the loss of deer-related crops in 2001 has reached $765 million, which has made deer-tailed deer and other deer more and more annoying.
However, even so, a deer with an innocent face like carrots, who has been shot by an arrow, can not ignore it. The relationship between human beings and nature is really delicate, and perhaps no one can know what the future will be.