A Brownsville man is warning drivers to watch for deer near Highway 48 in Cameron County. The road connects Brownsville to South Padre Island.<\/p>\n
Ramon Fernandez Jr. spotted a large deer crossing the highway last weekend. He posted about it on Facebook, and several others said they’ve seen more deer near the road lately.<\/p>\n
“Driving back from the island when I turned on 48 to come to Brownsville, there was a huge deer crossing the street, and everybody stopped to let him cross, it was pretty big,” Fernandez said.<\/p>\n
Fernandez has visited the island dozens of times but says the sightings are new to him.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s something new because over the years I’ve never seen deer out there,” he said.<\/p>\n
With speed limits reaching 70 miles per hour on the highway, Fernandez worries about crashes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“If you hit an animal of that size, someone is going to get hurt,” he said.<\/p>\n
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department says the sightings are common. Wildlife biologist Ernesto Garcia-Ortega says deer may be moving through the area as plants begin to flower and attract them to new food sources.<\/p>\n
“So they might be going after those foods that are readily available,” Garcia-Ortega said.<\/p>\n
Garcia-Ortega says the biggest risk is when drivers aren’t paying attention. With more traffic heading to the island for spring break, he’s urging drivers to stay alert.<\/p>\n
“That half a second can actually mean life or death, and not just for us but for the other drivers that we’re sharing the road with,” Garcia-Ortega said.<\/p>\n
Fernandez hopes drivers will slow down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’m an animal lover, you know I don’t want them to get hit by cars,” he said.<\/p>\n
Watch the video above for the full story.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Brownsville man is warning drivers to watch for deer near Highway 48 in Cameron County. The road…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[235699,235692,235698,235695,235694,235691,1527,235697,1528,79,235693,235696,34687,201],"class_list":["post-522776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animal-vehicle-collisions-cameron-county","tag-brownsville-deer-sightings","tag-brownsville-facebook-deer-warning","tag-deer-crossing-highway-48","tag-ernesto-garcia-ortega","tag-highway-48-cameron-county","tag-rgv","tag-rgv-wildlife","tag-rio-grande-valley","tag-science","tag-south-padre-island-traffic-safety","tag-spring-break-driving-safety-texas","tag-texas-parks-and-wildlife","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}