Not all heroes wear capes.
Some heroes have New Jersey accents and work for the Strong Island Animal Rescue League, which is a non-profit organization based out of New York. One of their workers, Frankie, got a call one day about a deer that was spotted near the Long Island Sound with a bucket stuck on its head. The member of the Animal Rescue League got to the scene as quickly as he could, and was immediately concerned when he saw the deer had wondered into the water.
Frankie told The Dodo that he knew he had to act fast, so that’s exactly what he did:
“If the bucket had filled with water, it would have held her head down and she would have drowned.
I saw the deer in the water, actually swimming in circles. I took my boots off, took my vest off and went into the water.”
Once Frankie got a ways out into the water, he noticed that his movement was spooking the deer, causing it to swim farther out. So that’s when “Plan B” kicked in, and the members of the animal rescue league waved over a boat that was nearby. The guy in the boat could not have been nicer, and was more than happy to help out. Frankie directed the boat driver to try to get close to the deer in distress, but as you might imagine, the noise coming from the boat continued to scare the animal.
After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, Frankie finally got a hold of the bucket and pulled with all of his might. In a scary turn of events, the man wasn’t sure if he had gotten the bucket off, and while he was trying to pull it off, he accidentally forced the deer to go under the boat.
There were a couple of tense moments there when the deer’s whereabouts were unknown, but thankfully it resurfaced. And when the animal did come back above the water, the bucket was no longer stuck on its head. Frankie made sure to grab the bucket out of the water so it couldn’t cause harm to any other animals, and then he and the good samaritan boat owner were going to be on their way.
However, they noticed that the deer (now bucket-less) wasn’t swimming back to shore, and instead was frantically swimming in circles. The animal rescue worker knew he couldn’t just leave the deer out in the water, so he instructed the boat driver to help him with one last thing.
Frankie laid on the front of the boat, and when the vessel got close enough, he picked up the deer and pinned it to the front of the boat just out of the water. The driver then slowly directed the boat to shore, and it was there where the deer finally regained its footing and ran off into the woods.
It was a valiant rescue, and one Frankie and Strong Island Animal Rescue League was happy to help out with. However, Frankie said that there’s one very easy way for situations like these to be avoided:
“If people just recycled their garbage better, these animals wouldn’t get themselves in so much trouble. They deserve to be able to enjoy Mother Nature as much as we do.”
