‘I would think he would stand out, he was huge and absolutely breathtaking,’ local resident says. ‘I couldn’t believe what I was seeing!’<\/p>\n
Midland residents are abuzz about a special cervid citizen now being seen.<\/p>\n
While moose sightings\u00a0have become more commonplace in recent months throughout north Simcoe, a piebald deer has regularly been spotted\u00a0in various locations over the past week.<\/p>\n
Laurie Chambers says she was taken aback when she first noticed the large buck\u00a0walking across Highway 93 just outside of Midland.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would think he would stand out; he was huge and absolutely breathtaking,\u201d Chambers says. \u201cI couldn’t believe what I was seeing! On Halloween Eve, no less, just before 12 a.m.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adds Pamela Harding: “Piebalds are a genetic mishap and super rare, but they are gorgeous. I’ve never seen a deer myself. If you saw it….lucky lucky.”<\/p>\n
A piebald deer has\u00a0a rare genetic mutation that causes patches of white and brown hair on its coat, along with potential physical deformities like a curved spine or short legs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Andr\u00e9 Quesnelle, who says he\u2019s seen what is likely the same\u00a0deer a couple of times while hunting in the area, says they\u2019ve \u201cnicknamed him Lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the Protect the Rare White Deer website, some First Nations cultures\u00a0hold\u00a0a deep reverence for deer exhibiting non-traditional markings.<\/p>\n
It notes that First Nations’ peoples often find that coming across a deer such as this one has a\u00a0spiritual meaning that can represent a symbol of transition and new beginnings, a messenger between the physical and spirit worlds, and a harbinger of good fortune or transformation.<\/p>\n
While Midland-Penetanguishene Field Naturalists president Bob Codd says that he’s never personally come across a deer with this kind of markings, it\u00a0appears to be similar to leucism in birds.<\/p>\n
Codd adds: “The difference is that the piebald condition is hereditary, whereas leucism can be caused by a variety of factors.”<\/p>\n
Midland-Penetanguishene Field Naturalists program director Ken MacDonald says that\u00a0documentation on\u00a0piebald deer shows they are born with the recessive gene that causes the condition.<\/p>\n
“(They) also suffer from other related defects leading to a poor chance of survival into adulthood, making the sighting of a piebald adult like this one quite rare.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘I would think he would stand out, he was huge and absolutely breathtaking,’ local resident says. ‘I couldn’t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-270853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}