Strange synchronicity.
My friend sent me this picture today. She'd found an injured muntjac in the hedge and carried it, wrapped in a blanket to her car. She thinks it was hit by a car. Anyway, the deer was in a blanket on the front seat and her dog - who in his past has chased these deer assiduously (to her dismay) - was in the back. It could have been challenging. But she successfully took the muntjac to Animals in Need and hopes they can save it. If not, better to die swiftly than spend hours in pain in a long painful death in very low temperatures.
And then, as I was walking my dog, I met another friend who told me that last week she had tried to save a muntjac - she did not succeed and in her case the situation did get incredibly challenging. Her dogs chased a muntjac into a river and were both latched onto it. She - and she is a lady rather older than I am - jumped into the river, flowing fast and deep with floodwater, and grabbed hold of the deer. But the water swept her under and she was pulled along in the flow. She lost hold of the deer - and the dogs regained it - while she felt herself starting to drown. The banks crumbled at her touch and she began to scream. Some other dog walkers heard her and ran over - one dropping a lead down the bank so that she could clamber out. The last thing she saw of the muntjac was its final desperate attempts to suck in air as the dogs forced it under.
She said that she couldn't look at the dogs for three days, though she knows it's only their nature.
How the world serves up these synchronicities. And how these two good people sought, despite the risk, to preserve the life a little wild creature.
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