By Margaret Houben
North Thompson Star/Journal
Who knew that walking home from a nice dinner out could be so ... exciting. On the evening of Sunday, July 3, Stacey Fortin and her 17 year old daughter Marlene were walking home from the restaurant, when they spotted a three point buck near the ball fields on Airfield Road. Stacey whistled, and it looked around at them, but didn’t run away. They continued walking slowly.
“Marlene asked me to get it’s attention again so she could take a picture with her cell phone,” Stacey explained, “so I whistled again and it turned to look at us.” Her daughter took the picture and as they continued on, she looked at the picture to see how it looked. “Marlene asked me to get the buck’s attention again as she thought he was too far away in the photo. I asked if she had a zoom feature on the phone and she thought she did.”
By this time they were nearing the tennis courts, and this time when Stacey whistled, the buck decided he’d had enough - he reared up and charged them. Stacey stated that “my daughter said ‘RUN!’, which they did. When they reached the chain link fence they started to scramble over it with Marlene getting stuck on top. The buck, probably startled that Marlene was suddenly much taller, flew past them without touching them and vanished into the bush.
Stacey helped Marlene back down off the fence and they finished walking home. Other than a few bruises from climbing the fence, they weren’t hurt. However, this experience has left Stacey a little nervous about going for walks in the early evening. “If Marlene had been younger or either of us any slower, things might have turned out a lot worse. I hate to think what would have happened had there been a toddler there.”
Stacey hopes local residents will learn from her experience, “if you want to take a picture of a deer or other wildlife - use the zoom feature and stay as far away from the animal as you can.” Which is excellent advice - also, don’t try to attract it’s attention, as you may not appreciate the kind of attention it may decide to give.