A New Brunswick couple, a fawn, Fredericton police response and bolt cutters.
It might sound like a strange combination, but the quartet was all that was needed to ensure there was a happy ending.
It all started Thursday evening, when Sean Barrett and his girlfriend, Candice Fraser, were driving up Route 105 on Fredericton’s north side, on their way to pick up a new fish for their fish tank.
“I was kind of daydreaming, looking out the window, and I just happened to notice a deer upside down, thought it was strange,” Barrett says, “and I kind of looked over at my girlfriend and said, ‘I think there’s a deer caught in the fence.'”
So the couple pulled over in the Salvation Army parking lot, got out and started looking.
Eventually, Barrett found the infant deer.
“It didn’t look good, it looked there maybe was a broken leg and it had some cuts,” he says. “It had some missing fur just from thrashing around because it was caught.”
“We tried to assess the situation and get it out of the fence but no luck,” Fraser says. “Then it was kind of a panic of ‘how do we help it?'”
Wedged in the fence too tightly, there was little they could do.
So they asked the salvation army if they had any wire or bolt cutters on hand, to no avail.
But it just so happened two Fredericton police officers, identified by the force as Cst. Bradstreet and Cadet Anderson, happened to be in the area on an unrelated call.
Luckily enough, they had bolt cutters in their patrol vehicle and were able to assist.
“Thankfully, right place right time that somebody showed up that had bolt cutters that could help get it out,” Fraser says.
Barrett got on top of the fawn to ensure it didn’t run for the nearby highway as it was being cut free.
Despite the worry, Barrett says, “after we got it cut out, it was moving all four legs just fine.”
The fawn ended up curling up in his lap, where it stayed until Department of Natural Resources members came.
He shared photos of the encounter online.
“There’s been a big response on social media which I didn’t expect,” he says. “My dad kind of got worked up because I didn’t film any of it. He was like, ‘people eat that stuff up and you didn’t even film it.'”
“To hold one and pet one and talk to it, you know it was like, you kind of have that thought like, I’d really like to take it home, but you can’t,” he chuckles.
Then DNR officers arrived with a kennel and told Barrett they’d examine the fawn and release it nearby to “hopefully reunite it with its mother,” he says.
The couple is just relieved they could rescue the fawn.
“Being an outdoorsman for almost 30 years, it’s one of those things where you don’t think twice about it,” Barrett says.
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