Daniel McPartlan has visual proof that Berkeley deer are law-abiding deer, who follow the rules of the road.
While driving along Grizzly Peak Boulevard on his scooter after dark on Dec. 17, McPartlan witnessed not one, but three deer use a crosswalk to get from one side of the road to the other. He posted the footage that his on-board video camera shot of the incident to Twitter the following day, with the comment, “That’s right America, Berkeley deer use crosswalks.” (We liked that so much we stole it for our headline.) Watch the video, below.
Jordan Klein, also on Twitter, responded to McPartlan’s tweet with the quip, “I’ve heard that we have the most well educated deer nationwide.”
While amusing, the encounter could have had a more serious outcome. McPartlan tells us that if a PG&E truck had not happened to be traveling in the opposite direction at exactly that moment, with its high beams illuminating the deer, “I would probably be in the hospital or worse.” McPartlan added he almost locked his brakes while stopping to avoid hitting the animals.
As to why McPartlan has a camera running when he’s driving his scooter or motorbike, he says he primarily got it for insurance purposes. “I travel a lot every day for my work and have close calls almost on a daily basis so it functions as my ‘dash cam,’” he said. “But it’s also fun to see what else I capture, such as the local wildlife!”
Over the years, Berkeleyside has published all manner of stories on the deer that roam our hills and streets, from the time a deer attacked a woman and her dog, through the hunt for an exotic Muntjac deer in Cesar Chavez Park, to a story published in August about a couple who took the death of a fawn they believed was killed by an off-leash dog into their own hands by stringing the dead animal up on a fence for all to see.
See more Berkeleyside deer stories and photos.
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