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Deer next to a plastic pumpkin bucket
Humans have had a massive impact on the world’s ecosystem, and countless animals have been threatened by the garbage that’s managed to make its way into their habitats. That includes one deer in Michigan that fell victim to a leftover from Halloween, as it spent more than a week with a plastic pumpkin stuck on its head before it was rescued.
There’s only so much you can do to control where your trash goes once it’s disposed of, but there are steps you can take to ensure you don’t inadvertently put wildlife in danger if it happens to end up in a place where curious animals have the potential to be threatened by it.
If you’ve spent enough time on the internet, you’ve likely come across videos of a plastic straw being extracted from the nose of a turtle and marine animals that have been left scarred after getting tangled in the discarded rings of a six-pack of beer, which are fates you can help them avoid if you deploy a pair of scissors before throwing those items out.
There are also plenty of clips involving fauna that lost the ability to eat and drink after getting something stuck over their head, like a bear that spent weeks roaming a town in Pennsylvania with a bucket covering its cranium before being saved by some selfless residents.
We can also credit some Good Samaritans in Michigan for staging a similar rescue mission after tracking down a deer that was victimized by a common Halloween sight.
A deer in Michigan spent more than a week with a plastic pumpkin on its head before being saved
Plenty of younger trick-or-treaters take to the streets on Halloween armed with a plastic bucket in the shape of a pumpkin they use to amass their stash of candy, but they have the potential to cause some problems if they aren’t disposed of properly.
According to WXYZ, a deer spotted in the Detroit suburb of Livonia became a bit of a local sensation after multiple people captured photos and videos of the animal walking around with a plastic pumpkin covering its muzzle, and the Detroit Animal Welfare Group launched a concerted effort to track it down.
Members of the group were able to do exactly that on Sunday, November 8th to bring a 10-day saga to an end, as they responded to a sighting in Hines Park and tracked down the deer before tranquilizing it and successfully removing the bucket before it woke back up.
The group noted it gets “several calls a year” concerning that exact scenario, and another deer was recently saved from the same fate in the town of Iron Mountain on the Upper Peninsula.
It seems safe to assume some of these cases boil down to littering, but it’s a good idea to remove the handles from those pumpkins even if you’re getting rid of them in a responsible manner to minimize the risk.