Kind-hearted Wisconsin woman goes to extreme lengths in attempt to save life of frozen baby deer
A fawn was rescued after it collapsed in front of Penny Paye Price's home in Brussels, Wisconsin, on February 24. After seeing the deer collapse, she brought it in and fed it. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has since picked up the fawn and it remains in their care.
Penny Paye Price is one of those kind-hearted everyday heroes who have made national headlines this year for the extraordinary efforts they've taken to rescue animals from winter's unforgiving elements.
Price and her family in northern Wisconsin welcomed a young deer into their home last Sunday. They spotted the deer struggling in their backyard during severe weather.
Price, a school teacher from Brussels, Wisconsin, shared photos of her family’s encounter with the ice-covered deer in a Facebook post.
Price told AccuWeather in an interview that while they frequently see wildlife roaming around the area, they haven’t seen many animals recently due to the large amount of snow and deep drifts -- some of which she estimates are 6 to 8 feet -- in their yard.
“It has been really, really snowy here in Wisconsin, and it was also a very windy day. We had all sort of wind warnings, with winds up to 60 mph,” Price said.
The family was in the basement when 8-year-old son William started yelling, “there’s a deer, there’s a deer!”
The deer was so close to their home that his mouth was almost pushed against a window. While her children were yelling, the deer remained still, coated in snow and ice.
“He wasn’t moving at all and then my daughter screamed, and her higher scream sent him running,” Price said. “He ran about 10 yards away and then collapsed.”
Price and her husband, Travis, who is a hunter, debated what to do with the collapsed deer, grappling with whether they should try to save him or put him down. Their daughter Vianna insisted they save him.
“We threw on our boots and jackets and we went outside. I grabbed a towel. He was really heavy, and it was hard to walk in the deep snow. He was like 50 pounds,” Price said.
They brought him to their basement and rested him on the floor.
“I honestly thought he was dead. His eyes were stuck open and he was not moving at all. You could see more snow than you could see his fur,” Price said.
Price reached out to her friend Bridget Haen-Isaksen, who is a humane officer, for advice. Haen-Isaksen said she should get warm towels and give him some water, as there was a good chance he was severely dehydrated.
“My husband and my four kids were running cycles of warm towels, and we would just cover him up and rub him,” Price said.
Price did not know he was a male until later when she noticed his little tiny antlers on his forehead, noting that he was a baby buck. The family, who are devoted Milwaukee Bucks’ fans, named the young buck Giannis after the Bucks' superstar power forward Giannis Antetokounmpo.
(Facebook/Penny Paye Price)
An hour later, Price recalled, the young buck was only starting to make small movements. Price said that she realized that he needed chest compressions.
“After about five minutes of chest compressions, he started holding his head up,” Price said. “And that’s when my husband started getting nervous. He was like we need to move him into the garage.”
They moved him out to their heated garage, where they brought more towels. Price said she used a medicine syringe to squirt water down his throat, holding his head up because he was too weak to swallow.
“And then I was like he probably needs calories, so I brought him sugar water and strawberry applesauce,” Price said. A video posted on Facebook shows price using the syringe to feed the baby deer and massaging his throat to help him swallow the applesauce. “All of a sudden, he gets up and he’s like running around our garage.”
She tried to calm him by wrapping him in a towel and lying him on a blanket.
“My kids were like laying on top of him to keep him to help keep him warm and talking to him,” Price said. “It was the sweetest thing.”
(Facebook/Penny Paye Price)
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) approved that Giannis could spend the night at their home, and arranged to bring the fawn to a rehabilitation facility the next day.
“Through the night, I was checking on him and he was doing OK. He was standing up and walking around,” Price said. “He was still very weak, I didn’t think that I could let him outside.”
On Monday, a DNR staff member took Giannis into the facility's care and warned that deer are susceptible to becoming weak and ill during cold winters, and that they have low fat stores.
The DNR staff member was not worried that he had developed a disease, but speculated that Giannis may have been abandoned by his mother, as most young bucks are. Young bucks are the least likely to survive the winter. Giannis was very weak when he was being transported, Price wrote in her Facebook post.
“He [DNR staff member] told me that the rehabilitation facility does not take all deer,” Price said. “I told him that I would prefer not to know what you decide to do because we would have kept him and rehabilitated him if it was legal.”
On Tuesday evening, Price found out that the DNR euthanized the fawn, as they were not able to save him due to his age and condition.
“I try not to concentrate on that part and just know that we tried to help him stay comfortable and at least he died with love,” Price said.
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