When Lynne Jordal Martin heard a bleating from her bedroom on July 2, she had no idea where it was coming from.
Thinking it might be a bird or a cat stuck in a tree, she went outside at 3 p.m. and looked around her Clamtown neighborhood.
After crossing the street, Martin peered into a storm drain.
“I thought, well, that’s a really large cat — an amber colored cat,” she recalled.
She soon realized it wasn’t a cat, but a small fawn she had seen in her yard the day before.
She gasped, letting out an audible “oh, no.” Soon the baby deer moved deeper into the drain. After conferring with her neighbors, she called Rye Police, who teamed up with the Department of Public Works and Rye Fire Department to free the fawn.
“When we got there, the DPW was already on scene attempting to get it out with the PD, but the deer had gone into the pipe that leads into the storm drain,” said Rye Fire Department Lt. Ryan Iarocci. “So, it was probably four to six feet away from the actual catch basin where the drain is.”
The fawn was too far away to be reached, so firefighters opened a drain down the road and flowed in a stream of water to coax the animal back toward the exit.
“We were originally going to try to grab it from down in the storm drain, but the way that it was positioned, it wasn’t possible,” Iarocci said. “And luckily, they didn’t do that, because right behind the baby fawn in the storm drain was a raccoon.”
The gentle stream of water, along with the presence of the racoon, seemed to be enough motivation for the fawn to flee the drain through the open grate.
A crew member picked up the fawn and placed it in Martin’s yard, ending the two-hour ordeal.
“They were creative in solving the problem,” Martin said. “They didn’t give up, and it was really impressive.”
This was all happening during the recent heat wave, leading Martin and her neighbors to speculate that the fawn had been searching for water to drink.
“I did not see it get reunited with the mother,” said Janice Clowe, who lives in the neighborhood. “However, we saw what we assumed was the mother deer in the neighborhood later on that day.”
Clowe commended Rye FD with a post on Facebook: “Thank you for your assistance and for the work you do for our community.”
Martin echoed Clowe’s gratitude.
“I think it’s good for people to see just how helpful they are,” she said. “Their service to our community extends even to creatures.”
