A baby deer on Long Island got separated from his mother and accidentally went for a dip in a swimming pool.
Greg Masaitis and 12-year-old Anthony were sitting in their backyard when they noticed the fawn wobbling in their backyard.
“I started recording to show my wife and daughter when suddenly it fell into the pool,” recalled Masaitis of St. James.
Masaitis never stopped recording, and captured the entire rescue on his camera phone.
“Hang on, hang on, back up Anthony the mother won’t like that,” Masaitis says in the video, fearful that the mother deer would reject the baby if it got too close to humans.
But Masaitis said they didn’t have much choice after the fawn fell into the pool and struggled to get out.
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“I was like oh my gosh, is she going to drown?” Anthony asked himself. “Is she going in the deep end? Do I have to go inside the pool to get her?”
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When the fawn swam to the other end of the pool Anthony ran to the other side and scooped her out with his arms.
His father could be heard on the video saying "Just get her out. When you get her out, just let her go because the mother isn’t going to be happy.”
But the video shows the fawn falling back in, and Anthony scooping her up again.
“I grabbed her out again and put her a little bit away from the pool so she wouldn’t fall back in,” explained Anthony.
The family believes the baby deer was reunited with its mother because a security camera placed in the woods behind their house captured images of a doe and her fawn. Anthony, a sixth grader in middle school, is now enjoying his turn in the limelight, after rescuing the baby deer probably just several hours old.
“It feels great because it was my first time holding or touching a deer so it was an experience,” said Anthony.
