A Deer Wandered Detroit’s Suburbs for 10 Days With a Halloween Pumpkin Stuck on Its Face — Then Rescuers Got One Last Call as Darkness Fell

Jessica Cross was in a Livonia, Michigan, neighborhood when she spotted a deer that looked like a Halloween joke. An orange plastic jack-o’-lantern, the kind kids carry door to door for candy, was wedged over its face.

For a second, she laughed. Then the young deer ran toward two others nearby, and they took one look at it and bolted. That was when she understood what she was watching.

“The way the face was all centered with the pumpkin. I mean, it was cute, but it also wasn’t,” Cross told 7 News Detroit. “I was a little disturbed by it.”

She posted a video, and soon the deer had metro Detroit watching — and worrying. The bucket covered the deer’s muzzle, and nobody knew whether it could still eat or drink. What followed was a 10-day manhunt for one small animal, run on social media tips, thermal drones and a lot of cold, wet volunteers. It ended in the dark, on the wrong side of a river, with one phone call that came just as everyone was ready to go home.

A Halloween Ghost in the Suburbs

The calls started coming in shortly after Halloween. The Detroit Animal Welfare Group, a nonprofit rescue known as DAWG and based in Romeo, began posting about the deer and asking people to report every sighting.

They came in from all over Livonia, including the wooded areas near Middlebelt and Levan roads, Spectrum News reported. On Nov. 5, Livonia police got a report of the animal near Curtis and Whitby streets. Officers and animal control searched the area and came up empty.

The deer was always one step ahead. People kept sending updates and photos, and FOX 2 Detroit reported that the group could see the animal getting weaker and thinner. They still couldn’t reach it. By Friday, Nov. 6, the group had gone hours without a confirmed sighting and was growing more worried about how much longer it could survive.

DAWG director Kelley LaBonty told 7 News Detroit that the worry followed her home. “You know, every day I woke up, 3 o’clock in the morning, thinking about him and worrying about him,” she said.

Drones, Darts and a Ticking Clock

The rescuers had help. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources gave the group permission to tranquilize the deer if they could get close enough. DAWG put out a call for anyone with a heat-sensing drone, and several drone pilots took time to scan the woods.

Getting close was the problem, and this deer would not wait around. The chase was hard enough that the group is now raising money for a tranquilizer gun with a longer range.

On Sunday, Nov. 8, someone reported seeing the deer in Hines Park in Westland, miles from where it had first been spotted. Hines Park is a 2,300-acre stretch of woods and river in Wayne County, according to the New York Post. Volunteers fanned out across it.

No luck. Darkness was setting in, and the team was ready to call it a night.

The Call That Came at Dusk

“We were just packing up and ready to go when we got the call, and so we were so excited,” LaBonty told 7 News Detroit. “We were right there, just around the corner, and came around and we saw him, and, of course, he was on the other side of the river.”

They went in after him. The group said it followed the deer through the woods and across a river 20 feet wide, again and again.

“It was not easy as we followed the deer through the woods and waded through a 20 foot wide river not once, not twice, but four times that was up to our thighs of freezing cold water,” DAWG wrote on social media, describing tall muddy banks, fallen branches and thick brush.

Then they got close enough. The deer was darted, and the pumpkin came off.

“We did it!” the group posted Sunday night. Thousands of people liked and commented on it, FOX 2 reported.

Not the Deer Everyone Thought

Up close, the rescuers found a surprise. For 10 days, the animal had been described as a doe. It was actually a young male, known as a button buck, UPI and Spectrum News reported.

He was moderately dehydrated. Volunteers gave him fluids and clipped a tag to his ear. The tag is required by the Michigan DNR because of the tranquilizer, and it warns hunters not to eat him within a month, 7 News Detroit reported. Then the drugs were reversed.

“And he was up and on his way,” DAWG wrote. “He stopped for a few minutes to groom himself and look back to say thank you!”

“Happy tears! We will finally get some sleep tonight even though we are cold, wet and smell like swamp,” the group added, thanking everyone who had searched over the 10 days.

Cross, who had shot the video that started it all, was relieved. “That’s awesome,” she told 7 News Detroit. “I was really worried. I was like, ‘Well, it can’t eat or drink. How long is it going to survive?’”

It Happens Every Single Year

The most surprising part of the story may be how ordinary it is. LaBonty said deer get their heads and mouths caught in plastic pumpkins every fall.

“Every year, this is a big thing every year,” she told 7 News Detroit. “It’s not just this year. Year after year, we get the same call with several deer getting their heads stuck in pumpkins.”

The group’s advice is simple. After trick-or-treating, take the handles off plastic pumpkins or bring them inside, and don’t leave decorations where curious wildlife can get to them.

For one young buck in Hines Park, that warning came 10 days too late. But he got the second chance LaBonty kept fighting for.

“You know, it’s a beautiful young baby,” she said. “He deserves a chance to live.”