Community Corner

We Grow Our Deer Hardy Here in Wauwatosa

Agile and resilient animal does not give in after a mere glancing blow from one vehicle and goes on to get the better of another.

Maybe it's because nobody hunts them. Maybe it's because they eat a healthy diet in the meadows and community gardens of the County Grounds. But whatever it is, our white-tail deer are apparently of strong stock.

At 7 p.m. Thursday, police were dispatched to the 1400 block of Swan Boulevard on a report of a disabled vehicle.

Officers found a man waiting, forlorn and perplexed, alongside his damaged 2007 Mercedes Benz SL55 roadster, about 500 feet south of Underwood Parkway.

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The driver, whose address was not given, said he had been travelling south in the right lane when a driver in the center lane ahead of him hit a deer that had leaped into the road.

The deer, he said, bounced off the other vehicle and struck his car front and center, then tumbled along as he ground to a halt, when he overran it and the animal became lodged under the low-slung front end of his expensive sports car.

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When he got out to check for carnage and damage, he said, the deer scrambled out from under his car, jumped up and ran off.

Police did find some hair and blood stuck to the crumpled grillwork of the Mercedes, but there was no sign of an injured or expiring deer in the immediate neighborhood, and the driver did not say that the animal appeared at all crippled in its flight.

There was, however, crippling damage to the man's sweet ride – sufficient damage that it had to be towed. The first driver to strike the deer must have hit it only a glanciing blow, because he or she did not stick around for the aftermath.

The police report did not say how fast the Mercedes driver thought he or the other driver were going, but in that stretch of Swan across the County Grounds drivers are typically accelerating toward 40 to 50 miles per hour.


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