'Deer' readers: We need to talk about the deer in town

First of all, my apologies for the horrible pun headline, but you must admit it was eye-catching as much as it was groan-inducing. My greater hope, however, is that it will be thought-provoking and, from those thoughts, promote some positive action about an issue that we all talk about but never do anything about it – and no, it's not the weather. It's the urban deer.

This is a difficult issue to even broach, let alone tackle, due to the fact that this has been their habitat long before we were here. "The lodge of the white-tailed deer" is the Native name of this valley for a reason, and while they had largely departed from our corner of this valley for another reason, that reason has been gone for decades and, as such, they've returned in droves.

Initially I think a lot of people, myself included, were happy to see them here as it was another sign that the Superfund days were numbered, but now, with a lot of food and not a lot of predators in town (which is ironic since we're the biggest predator the world's ever seen, dinosaurs included) they've happily bedded down and even started adapting to our ways.

I can't count the number of times I've seen deer run up to the curb, stop, look for traffic, walk slowly across the road, then run off again. It's kind of funny, but it's also kind of disturbing, especially since they haven't all learned what we're supposed to practically as soon as we can walk. Naturally, whenever these creatures are struck and killed by a vehicle, there's a reaction, as I'm told there was the other day on social media (I've sworn off it myself, a privilege I'm afforded by our amazing staff). The urban deer is a topic that's gotten some ink in this paper before, including just a week ago reprinting an article from FWP detailing just how bad it is for the deer's health to eat our food, but I think there's room for print and online media to intersect, which we'll do on this issue.

On our website, anacondaleader.com, we will put up a poll asking you, our readers, what you feel local and state officials should do about the urban deer. Should there be a cull? Should there be stiffer penalties enforced for people who purposely feed the deer? (It is illegal you know.) What's the cause of their being down here in the first place? We'll be asking you these questions, and after leaving it up a couple weeks (I know how long it can take for our out-of-state print subscribers to get our paper, which is a good reason to get on our website) I'll write a follow-up to this column.

Whether anything comes of it or not, I don't know, but it's time we the public at least have this conversation.