A Blind Doe’s Pickup Drew Half the Neighborhood and a Horse Trailer

Plenty of kids are hard to get out the door before school. One 10-year-old, reportedly in the Chicago suburbs, had an extra stop on his morning route. He walked a blind doe from one patch of grass to another so she could find enough to eat.¹²

This is not new news. The story went viral in late September 2015, when AOL covered a photo of the pair.² It has resurfaced on other sites since, some of them making it look recent. Every account traces back to a single post by a neighbor who goes by bluecollarclassicist on Reddit. The boy, his family, the rescue group and the town were never named.

How the neighbors got involved

According to the Redditor’s post, as quoted by Good News Network and others, he and his wife watched the boy guide the deer for several days before they took the photo and shared it online.¹³

The boy was not the only one helping. The neighbor wrote that the rest of the neighborhood had been feeding the deer and steering her away from the road for almost a week. He called the boy the sweetest example of it.¹³

The neighbor’s wife was the one who called for help. She reached a wildlife rescue group a few towns over that has a vet on staff.³ The Redditor said the group was licensed by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. In Illinois, only that kind of group is legally allowed to treat and shelter deer.⁴

The rescuers arrived with a horse trailer. Half the neighborhood came out to watch, including the boy and his mom.⁴ By suburban standards, a deer pickup with that kind of turnout counts as a parade.

A goodbye, handled well

The Redditor said the boy handled the deer’s removal maturely. As AOL quoted the neighbor:²³

“He just wanted her to be ok and was relieved to know she would be safe.”

Before the pickup, the neighbor said the deer would likely be tagged and taken to a controlled forest preserve. Because she seemed so docile, he said, she might instead end up at an approved farm or petting zoo.³ Later accounts say she was brought to a wildlife preserve.¹²

A thank-you for the boy

The couple also wanted to recognize the boy. “He showed a lot of love and respect and my wife and I are going to talk to his mom about a way she would want to see his act of kindness rewarded,” the Redditor wrote, as quoted by Good News Network.¹

He had a couple of ideas ready. “We are going to frame this photo for them and offer to take him to the local wildlife preserve whenever he wants to go,” he wrote.¹