A Michigan woman sparked conjecture online after recording a baffling scene she witnessed while driving down the road — a deer in what appeared to be a bright orange high-visibility vest.
“There is literally a deer with an orange vest running around confused at the corner of Sterling and Moscow,” Melissa Gow, of Hillsdale County, wrote on Wednesday along with the video she took:
There is literally a deer with an orange vest running around confused at the corner of sterling and Moscow Boy was I not expecting this post to blow up like this
Posted by Mysie Renee Gow on Wednesday, December 18, 2024
The footage shows vehicles yielding at an intersection to allow the well-dressed deer to prance across.
In response to comments speculating on if the deer was someone’s pet, Gow wrote that the animal seemed to display “pet behavior.”
“Was running after cars and you can see when we went to leave the intersection with a truck and horse trailer she was wanting to follow us too. We had no clue what to do. She wasn’t near there when we went back though so I’m hoping she went someone safer,” Gow wrote in a comment under her post.
Another commenter guessed that someone “bottle raised” it from a fawn, but put the orange vest on it “as it got bigger so no one shoots it.”
That theory appeared to be popular when news outlets began picking up the story, with readers of WFRV saying that the deer had probably been going to “someone’s house since a fawn” and “they don’t want it shot”:
“There was a deer with a pink ribbon around its neck, in Waushara County, a while back. It was tame – and gone after hunting season,” another commenter wrote.
“It’s a backyard pet….someone has been feeding since a baby,” someone else said.
In a statement to WILX, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources said they do not condone putting vests on wild animals.
