We had the phone call at 10pm in May a lady who lived on the Longfurlong road had found a deer stuck in brambles in the ditch outside her bungalow, she thought it had been there two days already.
Simon and I shivered at this phone call because anyone who knows the Longfurlong road knows it as one of the most dangerous and busiest roads in England, with its bends and curves and deep valleys and hills, there are many deaths on it. Apparently, we did not know at the time that at night it was the road that all the super lorries use to their Southampton destination.
We decided to go and look and donned all the head torches, lamps, and reflective gear that we had, and met up with the lady in the bungalow, worse to come was that she lived right on the bend of the road between a field and a drive to a farm.
We shone the light in the direction of the deer and saw it was still there stuck, we ventured along the ditch judging where it was and noticed that the brambles were above our heads in height, over 6 ft.
We had brought a variety of gardening tools but the lady offered hers as well and we started cutting towards the deer but he then moved along a little way getting stuck again. What worried me was the amount of traffic in pitch dark thundering behind us, cars, huge lorries biggest ever hauling ship containers and vans, and I thought if this deer bolted into the road it would get killed and kill whoever driving a vehicle as they would no doubt swerve to avoid.
We didn’t want this deer to die, so at midnight we sat in the lady’s bungalow having a cup of tea to warm us up and we phoned the Police to say we needed assistance and that it was a dangerous situation, would be worse during the day and could we have two Police cars to block the traffic either side of the road while we freed the deer. Well, they couldn’t offer us 2 cars as they only had two cars on duty, so one car and an officer would have to do.
At 1 am we met with this lovely Scottish Police Officer who put on his flashing lights to warn traffic and we told him how we would conduct the rescue. We wanted the deer to go the way of the Barley field which led to woods, not the farm track which was fenced on both sides, we did not want him forced into the road. So we carefully came in through the bramble which entrances the Barley field and started tunnelling our way up to where the deer was. The logic was if we could get through the tunnel we had made then the deer would run through it to freedom. It took over an hour of blood sweat and tears to reach the deer, we then came out on the road and with the officer shouted, waved and clapped hands to frighten the deer through the tunnel and to freedom.
We did it !!! the deer ran through the Barley field towards the wood showing up on the lovely Police man’s torch and we nearly all wept with joy.
Job Done time for bed……
Jaine and Simon.