It's one of Nanaimo"s most endearing qualities as long as it doesn’t end up dead. We’ve all seen deer grazing at roadsides but most of us to little more than slow down a bit if we happen to see them in time.
Departure Bay resident Julie Fletcher however, not only slows down in areas she knows are favourites for deer but she’s getting other drivers to slow down too.
"They do their circuit,” she says. “They’ll go to Hammond Bay and then they’ll come up here, every day about four, five o’clock, they just do the circuit.”
Julie’s lived in her Departure Bay home, between a treed park area and Linley Valley for more than ten years and obviously knows the routine well. She also knows what it’s like having to haul the carcasses of the unlucky ones off the road.
“My husband would do it. I couldn’t do it,” she says.
She put up a sign alerting drivers of high levels of deer traffic about a year and a half ago and hasn’t had to call animal control since. “It really has worked! And that saves on people’s vehicles being hit and ICBC and the whole thing. Everyone’s happy.”
Right now the sign reads: Slow, X-ing deer but come June, when the does bring out their fawn, the X-ing portion will be removed and the sign will read: Slow, Baby deer.
Published in the Nanaimo Daily News on Thursday, May 13, 2004. Copyright (c) Kait Light, kaitsquirks.com, Nanaimo, BC, Canada. All Rights Reserved.
