Deer Rescue Makes Officers' Day

D.C. police and animal control officers secure a deer by the antlers. Two bucks were tranquilized and pulled from the Tidal Basin. (Wrc-tv (Channel 4))

O fficer Ted Deppner was driving his wife to work yesterday morning when he got the call: Deer in the water.

It was Ted's day off from the Washington Humane Society, where he works animal control. He'd planned on spending it puttering around the house, but instead he drove out to his office on New York Avenue NE and grabbed his equipment: an air rifle, an air pistol, darts, syringes, vials of animal tranquilizer, a capture pole.

Around the same time, Officer Hilliard Dean and Officer Robert Grooms , members of the D.C. police Harbor Patrol, arrived at the Tidal Basin, a Zodiac launch on a trailer behind them.

Yep, deer in the water. Two of them: white-tailed bucks, swimming around with a sort of what-have-we- gotten-ourselves-into look on their faces.

That look may have been mirrored on the faces of Officer Dean and Officer Grooms.

"Myself and my partner, we'd never done this before," said Officer Dean.

Officer Deppner had. He knew that deer are good swimmers. He figured this pair had probably ambled down from Rock Creek Park or somewhere, been spooked by the rush-hour traffic and leapt into the Tidal Basin. But the two feet of wall rising above the edge of the lagoon made it impossible for them to climb out on their own.

"We got in the Zodiac, and off we went," said Officer Dean.

Quick and maneuverable, the Zodiac is the sort of boat James Bond villains zip around in. But the Zodiac is also inflatable. And as Officers Dean and Grooms drew closer to the first animal and saw the huge, eight-pointed rack on his head, it occurred to them that perhaps the Zodiac was not the most suitable vessel for marine deer extraction.

Officer Deppner assured them that the deer's antlers were unlikely to puncture the boat. He also said the deer wouldn't try to climb in. Nor would the deer sink after they had been tranquilized. A deer's big, gas-filled stomach makes it naturally buoyant, he explained.

When they were about 10 yards away from the first buck, Officer Deppner raised his air rifle, took aim and squeezed the trigger.

The three men watched as the tranquilizer dart glanced off the deer's thick hide.

"I decided to use another approach," said Officer Deppner. He pulled out a pole syringe, a three-foot long metal tube with a syringe inserted at the end. He leaned over the front of the Zodiac, his legs held by another officer, as the boat made repeated high-speed runs at the deer.

Sometimes the needle went in. Sometimes it bent and needed replacing. Finally the deer was groggy enough for Officer Deppner to slip the lasso of the capture pole over its antlers and pull it to shore.

But now they couldn't find the other deer.

"It's hard to see them from the water," said Officer Deppner. "Only the antlers and a little bit of tail stick up. There's a lot of ducks and stuff out there. You'd see something, and it'd turn out to be ducks and geese."

"That's when we got the helicopter," said Officer Dean.

They also got a second boat, switching to a fire department Zodiac after theirs developed engine trouble.

A police chopper radioed the coordinates of the second deer, which had swum to the edge of the Tidal Basin, where it blended in with the stonework. This one was even bigger, 300 pounds, and even more determined not to be caught.

But Officer Deppner jabbed it repeatedly until it, too, drowsily allowed itself to be pulled to shore.

The two deer were loaded into a van and driven to the northern reaches of Rock Creek Park in the District, near Wise Road NW, and unloaded. They were dragged about 100 yards into the park, where Officer Deppner gave each of them an injection of Yobine, a drug that counteracts the tranquilizer.

After a few minutes, the deer rose unsteadily to their feet. "One headed down into the creek and started going up the side, the smaller one," said Officer Deppner. "The other one was just kind of stumbling around. They were up and walking around. That's when we left them."

Officer Deppner returned to the shelter and restocked -- he'd used most of the tranquilizer supplies -- then headed home to his chores. Officers Dean and Grooms spent the rest of the day being ribbed by their Harbor Patrol colleagues.

"It was a first for me, growing up in the city and all," said Officer Grooms of the deer hunt. "I enjoyed it, actually. That was something very different that you don't come across every day."