In more than three decades of animal welfare work, Sally Fekety had rarely seen anything more brutal. Stuck in the narrow space between two rails of a wrought iron fence was a young buck fighting for his life. Suspended horizontally over a crossbar a few inches off the ground, he’d tried in vain to free himself for so long his sides were open wounds. The pile of fur that once covered his now-raw skin lay behind him. One of his antlers had snapped off. His hooves were buckled from nerve damage.

Fekety’s friend had come upon the scene first while visiting her father’s gravestone one November afternoon. Marking the perimeter between Forest Hill Cemetery and surrounding houses in Ann Arbor, Mich., the fence had become a death trap. “She called me, and I went running over,” says Fekety. “I threw a blanket over his face that calmed him down.”

But it didn’t last long. Soon enough the deer tossed the blanket off his head and began struggling again. With so many years of experience handling animals in distress, Fekety has an intuitive sense for how to use quiet movement and expression to keep deer calm. “But this one was so far gone in the stress of his predicament,” she says, “that he just couldn’t see I was trying to help him.”

No one present that day—not Fekety, her friend, or the local humane society officer who also showed up to help—could understand how the deer had wedged himself past his rib cage into only a few inches of space. But far from being unusual, the scenario has become all too common. Wildlife rescuers respond to numerous calls of deer caught in the crossrails or, sometimes even worse, impaled on the spikes. “Those are some of the most heartbreaking calls we have to go on,” says Candice Haskin, a Maryland Department of Natural Resources biologist who helps free animals from such hazards, often in people’s backyards. “And those fences have gotten really, really popular.”

Caught in unintentional traps

Among the many challenges urban and suburban wildlife face, getting stuck—whether in fencing, leftover food jars, open window wells, soccer nets, even hammocks—is one of the most difficult to survive without early intervention from human helpers. Nationwide,
state agencies and private wildlife rehabilitation centers rescue and treat raptors, foxes, bears, skunks, snakes, and many other animals who have traversed through the wrong place at the wrong time. Often that time is at night, when obstacles are harder to see. In the morning, frantic homeowners call for assistance after hawks have flown into volleyball nets or foxes have gotten their legs tangled up in fallen fences.

Hidden traps are particularly hazardous to bucks because, as Haskin says, “anything that’s got holes, they’ve got the potential to get their antlers hooked up in it.” Though she and her colleagues have saved many animals from such fates, sometimes nothing can be done. One deer caught in a soccer net had waited too long before the homeowners spotted him. “By the time I got there,” Haskin said, “it had wrapped [the net] up around its nose and actually suffocated.”

Recently Pedro Dieguez had just dropped his daughter off at her bus stop when he noticed a gathering of neighbors in someone’s yard. Stopping to find out the source of the commotion, he came upon a deer caught in a makeshift lacrosse backstop fashioned from fishing nets. Mindful of the strength of large animals, Dieguez used a gardening tool and a knife to carefully cut the netting and free the buck. “I don’t like to see any animals suffering,” he says, “and that would be a heck of a way to go.” But it was too late. “Unfortunately he had already exhausted himself,” Dieguez says. After walking a bit, the buck fell over and died.

Prevention is key

One of the greatest tragedies of such unnecessary suffering is that it is so preventable. To minimize fencing and netting hazards on your own property, consider the landscape from the animal’s perspective and take the following simple steps:

Stow it away. When not in use, put soccer nets, volleyball nets, hammocks and other recreational equipment in the garage or another storage space. If something can’t be moved, try tying bright fabric or a ribbon to it—something that animals with good night vision can clearly see, recommends Haskin.

Find humane alternatives. Intended to keep animals from nibbling the fruits of the gardener’s labor, netting often does far more than that. Snakes, birds, squirrels and chipmunks caught up in the holes can easily wound themselves or dehydrate and die. Flash tape and motion-detecting sprinklers are among the many alternatives, but perhaps the best solution of all is to plant more and share.

Pick up or repair fallen fencing. Wire fencing is difficult enough to see, but collapsed wire can quickly become buried in leaves and plant growth. Broken or unsecured chain link or wooden slat fencing can also ensnare animals. Remove any unnecessary structures, and maintain those you need to keep up for pet safety or other reasons.

Look for safe tree protection materials. To protect young trees from deer nibbling and rubbing, many people use orange plastic wrapping or other small-holed, flexible materials that can strangle or suffocate. Look for something less likely to entangle antlers; tubing, bamboo wrap and wider-spaced wire can protect trees while minimizing harm to animals.

Avoid the wrought-iron fence. They might look pretty, but fences with vertical metal rails are some of the most dangerous, and spikes on top exacerbate their deadliness to wildlife. “Those are some of the worst ones that could be prevented just by picking a different type of fence,” says Haskin.

Add under- and overpasses. When removal of other types of fencing is impractical, landowners can make adjustments. At an Oregon sanctuary where horses need to be contained, wildlife experts at the Humane Society of the United States added underpasses made of PVC pipes for small animals, bridges for bears, window-like gaps for coyotes, and other adjustments to ease the journey of animals just passing through.

Let him not die in vain

As the deer caught in the cemetery fence rallied in a last-ditch effort to free himself, Fekety wished she could put him out of his misery; his external and internal injuries were too extensive to repair. “ ‘I hate guns, but I would give anything to have a gun right now,’ ” she remembers telling the humane society agent. “Because the deer was just struggling and struggling.”

Eventually the police came to help, but the deer had already died. By the end of the next day, he was gone, taken away by municipal officials. The blood had also disappeared. But though no signs of the epic struggle remained, Fekety hopes the deer did not die in vain—and that his story will help other animals live on by making more people aware of what our fellow species see—and don’t see—in the landscapes that they, too, call home.

Learn more about preventing safety hazards in your own backyard—and other ways to live harmoniously with wildlife—in my book, The Humane Gardener: Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife.

Learn more about the story of Kade Damian, a Texas boy who died while trying to climb an exposed-picket fence, and learn how you can modify such fencing to make it less dangerous at KadesKrusaders.org.