COLUMBUS — The deer is free, free of the Halloween candy bucket that had encased its head for at least a week.
Apparently.
“A resident of Columbus near Henderson (Road) and Chevy Chase (Avenue) called to say that he found a pumpkin bucket by his deer feeder this morning,” the Upper Arlington Police Department tweeted Saturday morning. “It is likely that the deer who has been the source of so much attention has shed his bulbous, orange muzzle.”
Ohio Wildlife Officer Brad Kiger visited the property on the Northwest Side of Columbus to check it out, and did a little detective work.
The pumpkin bucket looked about the same size as the one seen in a photo of the deer with the stuck bucket, Kiger said. The face on the bucket found Saturday matched the one in the photo: triangular eyes with a jagged mouth.
The bucket had dents, same as the one in the photo, Kiger said. And — there was deer hair inside the bucket.
“We didn’t see it fall off the deer itself,” Kiger said. So he and others will be keeping an eye out to make sure that the one found Saturday isn’t some other bucket set near the deer feeder by a prankster. Or someone.
An Upper Arlington police dispatcher said it’s likely that’s the bucket. “We can’t say for 100 percent,” he said.
Officials have been monitoring the deer after receiving daily tips from residents who saw the deer in northwestern Upper Arlington near the Squirrel Bend and Slate Run neighborhoods.
Kiger said the deer is a “button buck,” a young male deer. Obviously a little curious.
In October, a deer was found in suburban Cincinnati trapped in a candy bucket. But these situations are unusual for deer.
“We probably get more calls about a raccoon with a can,” Kiger said.
