Bucky was our pet deer; that is, he was until he decided he could take care of himself and wandered away a year and a half after the boys found him, a tiny helpless baby asleep on the road. When they brought him home for mother to feed with the bottle he was so weak it seemed doubtful whether he could live. After a week he began to gain, and he fed greedily.
With his mischievous tricks, his frieniness, his little peculiarities such as going hungry rather than take the bottle from anyone but mother, and his fine noble appearance, he won his way into the hearts of the whole family and many others who came from far and near to see Bucky.
At the age of fifteen months when he grew his antlers, a beautiful set with three prongs and one small one on each horn, he began to feel independent. Several times he wandered into town two miles away where he helped himself to delicacies from the gardens. Then, like a hungry boy, he returned, and the tinkling of the bell about his neck and the striking of his front hoofs against the door told us Bucky was home and wanted his bottle.
One day he did not return. Three weeks later a neighbor saw him twelve miles away in the valley. Bucky came to him and submitted to being petted; then he turned and walked off. That was the last we heard of Bucky although the game warden offered a reward for his return. Since it was near deer-hunting season, the fate of so tame an animal seems rather sure.
Some of us have been picked up and rescued from sure destruction in somewhat the same way our baby deer was saved from death by starvation or by the attack of a hungry wolf. Are you among the number, or are you asleep and insensible of your peril?
ML 07/06/1941