Surfer Rescues Baby Deer

(Photo: Jenn Balak/Virginia Beach Pilot)

Last month, Tyler Balak was a few hundred feet out into the water at Buxton, North Carolina. He was enjoying a pleasant day surfing when he saw something moving in the water. At first, he thought it was a shark. Then, when he saw that it was a deer--a baby deer.

Balak picked up the fawn and carried her to shore. He and other people on the beach located a wildlife rescue center nearby and took the deer--which was clearly in shock--there. The Virginia Beach Pilot reports:

On the Internet, they discovered Hatteras Island Wildlife Rehabilitation, an animal rescue shelter 6 miles away in Frisco.

Lou Browning, president of the nonprofit, put the fawn in a padded room.

"It was coming out of its ocean shock at that point and ready to go ballistic," Browning said, adding that fawns can hurt themselves in captivity.

So Browning watched, and all signs pointed to a happy ending. The fawn had good muscle tone and no ticks around its eyes and ears. It moved well, could see and had no obvious injuries. A few hours after the deer arrived, Browning sedated it, took it back to Buxton and released it.

No one knows how it ended up so far out into the ocean.

-via Ace of Spades HQ