A pair of deer seen wandering Locust Avenue in Red Bank near the Bellhaven wetlands Thursday afternoon.
A string of wet, dreary days continued with heavy fog Friday morning, along with a National Weather Service warning of possible strong winds through 7 p.m., with gusts up to 60 miles per hour. Sunshine was expected to return Saturday.
Check out the extended forecast below. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
A deer checks out two-legged visitors enjoying a first-full-day-of-spring stroll in Rumson’s Meadowridge Park late Monday afternoon.
The post-winter thaw continues Tuesday, with temperatures expected to peak at about 55 degrees, and to climb as high as 68 on Wednesday, according to the Weather Underground. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
With Christmas over, were three of Santa’s reindeer hoping to reunite with Jolly St. Nick in Red Bank over the weekend? Borough resident Charlie Bierly photographed this deer trio in the intersection of Madison Avenue and — no kidding — St. Nicholas Place Saturday afternoon. (Photo by Charlie Bierly. Click to enlarge)
An unidentified motorist suffered minor injuries from crashing into a concrete driveway pillar on Branch Avenue near Silverton Avenue in Little Silver at about 3:55 a.m. Monday, Police Chief Dan Shaffery tells redbankgreen. Shaffery said the motorist swerved to avoid a deer and was treated on the scene by borough First Aid volunteers. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
The doe allowed caretakers to swaddle it in blankets for several hours Saturday evening, above. Below, the doe struggling to escape the frigid Navesink that afternoon; the deer at left drowned. (Photo above by Stan Balmer, below by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
A deer saved in a dramatic rescue from the frigid waters of the frozen Navesink River Saturday was released later that night – but only after veterinary professionals suggested it be euthanized, redbankgreen has learned.
Second Deputy Fire Chief Pete DeFazio said personnel at the Red Bank Veterinary Hospital in Tinton Falls told him and other emergency volunteers that the hospital had no facilities for the deer, which while uninjured, was cold and immobile, and would probably be euthanized.
“I said, ‘why, after we went to all this trouble, would you euthanize it?'” DeFazio told redbankgreen Monday evening. “How can you kill this thing after all we went through to save it?”
Video of the rescue as the boat goes out a second time and brings in a deer. Below, the two deer in the channel they created as they tried to escape. (Video and photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
One deer was rescued and another drowned after they fell through the ice on the Navesink River off Red Bank Saturday afternoon.
The dramatic rescue of a doe followed an all-out effort by local fire and first aid volunteers assembled on the dock of the Oyster Point Hotel, on the Red Bank side.
The front walkway at the Raevis house in Fair Haven is decorated with pumpkins grown in the community garden. Below, a bountiful harvest of pumpkins grown on a double plot in the garden. (Photo by Susan Ericson. Click to enlarge)
By SUSAN ERICSON
Even with this second coming of lettuce and spinach, rules must be obeyed, and all forms of inner fencing, weed-control sheeting, rakes, spades, hoses and whirligigs are to be removed from the Fair Haven Community Garden by this weekend, closing out another season.
Opinions on how the season went had a lot to do with what was planted and where. The sunnier plots nearest Ridge Road seemed to have a better tomato crop, while the cruciferous vegetables did better in the shadier back areas.
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A redbankgreen reader spied this unusual piebald white-tailed deer in Rumson earlier this week, declining to be more specific about its location. A genetic mutation that occurs in less than one percent of the deer population causes the pinto-pony look, though it sometimes produces an even rarer all-white albino deer, according to the New Jersey Division of Fish & Wildlife. (Click to enlarge)
No, this antlered male deer wasn’t peering in a window at the newly reopened First Presbyterian Church at Tower Hill in Red Bank Tuesday evening, but at our camera. A dog-walking passerby said the spot seems to be one of the deer’s favorites. (Click to enlarge)
Volunteers served up a game-meat lunch that included venison tacos at Lunch Break on Tuesday. (Photo by Jim Willis. Click to enlarge)
By JIM WILLIS
The Sportsman Channel’s Hunt.Fish.Feed outreach program volunteers were at Red Bank’s Lunch Break on Tuesday serving up deer meat.
Scott Leysath, chef and host of the channel’s “Dead Meat” program, prepared ground-venison tacos from game meat donated by hunters.
“A lot of people have misconceptions about what deer meat tastes like,” but tacos are good way to get people to try it because it’s a very forgiving dish, Leysath told redbankgreen‘s PieHole.
“They love it,” he said of the room full of diners, “and if they don’t they haven’t told me.”
The male, just a few days old, checks out healthwise, according to the Humane Society. (Click to enlarge)
[See correction below]
An ailing baby deer was found in the playground of the Shrewsbury School Creative Learning Center in Shrewsbury Wednesday morning, borough animal control officer Henry Perez tells redbankgreen.
The fawn, “just a few days old,” was lethargic and undernourished, Perez said.
The deer’s mother was nowhere to be seen, he said.
Two passersby try to corral a loose dog that chased a deer into Ridge Road in Fair Haven late Friday morning, causing the deer to be struck by a passing car. The deer had to be euthanized and the dog was returned to its owner in Rumson, animal control officer Henry Perez tells redbankgreen. (Click to enlarge)
A deer crosses a Shrewsbury street in 2010. (Photo by Peter Lindner. Click to enlarge)
Local and state laws that allow deer hunting closer to housing than in the past drew protesters to Shrewsbury on Sunday, the Asbury Park Press reports Monday.
Led by Sycamore Avenue resident Dede Lichtig, about a dozen protesters from Shrewsbury, Fair Haven, Middletown and elsewhere voiced concern about a shrinking of the deer hunting safety zone passed earlier this year by the state Legislature, as well the borough governments decision to maintain its hunting law, the Press reports.
A deer crosses a street in Shrewsbury at dusk last year. Fair Haven officials say they’re watching Shrewsbury’s effort to curtail its deer population. (Photo by Peter Lindner. Click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Last year they were eating tree seedlings out of Stephen Knowlton’s yard on Church Street in Fair Haven. This year he’s having a hard time keeping a patch of lilies.
Elizabeth Lilleston, Fair Haven’s code enforcement officer and a resident of Woodland Drive, says she sees them daily roaming the street.
And Mayor Mike Halfacre, who also lives on Church, snapped a picture on his cell phone last week of one chomping on his neighbor’s grass.
If Fair Haven’s deer population isn’t controlled, Knowlton warned, “they’re going to be sleeping on our front lawns.”
Like towns across New Jersey, the borough is now facing a tricky problem: an apparent rise in deer wandering into the residential areas of town, and few options to thin the herds.
“I don’t know what we can do short of a hunt,” Halfacre said.
A deer on the lawn of the Monmouth County Library’s Eastern Branch on Route 35 last October. (Photo by Peter Lindner; click to enlarge)
Not a word of objection was uttered Monday night as the governing body of the fed-up-with-deer borough of Shrewsbury gave the nod to the use of bows and arrows to thin burgeoning herds.
Then again, the move was a formality, as the council simply accepted the findings of a report that recommended that frustrated property owners do what they’ve been allowed to do for the past five years: kill the animals with arrows, provided they do so within New Jersey Division of Fish, Game & Wildlife regulations.
Now, the only question is how many residents take the suggestion.
“A few people in town are so fed up, they’re going to do it,” said Mayor Donald Burden, who this year tore out his own vegetable garden in surrender to the white-tailed creatures.
Only one of the many readers who wrote in on last week’s image, which showed a roadside “Deer Xing” sign, got it wrong. Turns out to be a well-noticed spot.
Deer on the lawn of an Elm Lane residence earlier this month. (Click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Most mornings, Brian Hall wakes up to find the motion sensor outside his home flashing. He’s gotten accustomed to it, much as his wife, Suzanne, has gotten used to her flower garden doubling as a feeding trough.
In the year-and-a-half that the couple have lived off Sycamore Avenue in Shrewsbury, deer have been as much a part of their neighborhood as the people who live next door.
“There definitely is a lot of deer,” Brian Hall said.
Now, as the ubiquitous artiodactyls appear to be causing a larger threat to public health and safety, the borough council is looking to residents for input on how to bring the increasing deer population under control.