Interesting experience today, while bumping around the briar patches at the back of my property in Pennsylvania.
We scared a nice buck white-tailed deer (that's not him above, but a reasonable facsimile) out of hiding and watched while he bounded towards a road only to stop alongside, at the top of a steep hill.
As he waited there, a car came towards the buck on the road, which caused him to lurch back a bit and tumble the hillside and into a thicket of briars.
We didn't want to pressure him any further, so we didn't go closer to check on him. But deer are incredibly resilient, and I'm sure he's just fine.
A bit embarassed, maybe.
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Yuck...but interesting!
If it looks like a mass of warts, it was probably something known as fibromas, which are wart-like, hairless tumors, varying in diameter from slightly more than a quarter-inch to nearly four inches. Some are covered by grayish brown to black, and often are scratched and bleeding.
They are caused by a virus, believed to be spread from deer to deer by biting insects, or by contact between deer or deer and their environment.
Various studies have found that young, male deer experience a higher incidence of the fibromas, which other studies have determined to be present in 1-5.5 percent of a local deer population. They rarely prove fatal to the infected animal, except when they block the mouth or eyes. The infected animal tends to behave normally, until the fibromas become a physical impediment, and the deer’s own immune system usually will resolve the problem. Being species-specific, the virus is not transmissible to humans or other animals. That’s similar to viral tumors that appear on squirrels and dogs, but are caused by other viruses.
We saw the weirdest thing last week while walking the trails through the neighborhood. Seeing deer on our property and in the area is a common occurrence, so it was no big deal to see a doe in a backyard on the trail. My husband spotted her first and she just stopped and gave us that 'are you lookin' at me?' stare they give you. We didn't notice at first, but when she moved to bound away, we saw she had a very large cyst/tumor/growth or whatever hanging between her front legs. It was the size of a basketball–no kidding. I felt bad for her, but she seemed very mobile. Although, the animal rescuer in me wanted get her to a vet!
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