This is not a joke — last night’s TV news reported on an attack by a lone deer on Berkeley resident Sarah Lopus (left) and her two dogs, Oliver and Lucy, while they were out walking yesterday afternoon.
The incident happened around lunchtime at the intersection of Colusa and Capistrano. Lopus said the deer came out of nowhere, charged at them and began to kick the dogs. Lopus tried to push the deer off the dogs but it persisted so she crouched down to cover the dogs, at which point the deer started kicking her. She ran down the street with the dogs to escape the deer shouting for help and some neighbors came to her assistance.
Lopus was left with a ripped shirt and a puncture wound in her leg. The pads on Oliver’s paws were ripped open when Lopus dragged him down the street but he is doing fine and Lucy was not harmed.
The California Department of Fish and Game said if this clearly aggressive deer is caught, they will probably have to put it down, since “releasing a deer that attacks an animal is not the proper protocol”.
In a separate incident, the Oakland police shot and killed a deer that had wandered into a backyard in Oakland last weekend, although there had been no attack and apparently no motive for the shooting.
Photo: ABC7 News.
