While San Francisco has adorable coyotes to contend with, folks in Berkeley are currently experiencing a much quirkier problem with their urban wildlife: violent deer. According to several readers over at Berkeleyside and Berkeley Animal Services, this spring has seen multiple cases where deer have gone after pedestrians in the Berkeley hills. Which has one local hiking group concerned about what Berkeley is doing to keep them safe from the doe-eyed menace.
As the president of the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association explained, during a May 29th attack a deer reportedly charged several times at a hiker who crossed her path. The frazzled hiker was only rescued when another hiker came along with a dog. When the "victim" called Animal Service, they were simply told to avoid the area for a few months, causing the Path Wanderers group to wonder why more steps weren't taken to alert people about the dangerous deer.
Anyhow, Berkeley Animal Services apparently gets calls about violent deer every year and the culprits are usually mothers being overprotective of their fawns like any good Berkeley mom might do. Last year, however, it was reported that Berkeley Police kill more deer than any other animal, so there's maybe this is some sort of deer vengeance.
(Note: we'd like to express our deepest apologies for that headline.)
