The Tragedy of Mamie's Pet Deer
A pet deer, raised with the freedom of a house cat, is senselessly killed by a hunter in the Skagit Valley.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Miss Mamie Arnold, who lives near Samish, has been the possessor of a pet deer for a year past, until the Fourth of July, when someone, out of pure cussedness, shot it. It was captured when a fawn by her brothers, who gave it to her, and she cared for it and raised it as a pet. It was very tame and would let most anyone handle it and play with it. It seemed to think it had the liberty of her home, and would go any place in the house with as much freedom as a kitten. It would go into her bedroom and jump up on the bed to sleep, or into the parlor and lie down on the sofa whenever it would get a chance, and was as much of a pet to Mamie as 'Mary's little lamb' was to Mary. After it became grown and during the spring it would sometimes stray off to the woods, but never failed to return. For fear of the fate which befell it, Mamie had a bell put on it so any hunter would know it was a pet deer; and the man that would shoot it with a bell on it would be capable of doing meaner things. It undoubtedly was shot on purpose.
“The man that would shoot it with a bell on it would be capable of doing meaner things.”
While this reads like a classic sentimental human-interest story from the 1890s, the tension between wildlife and encroaching rural settlements remains a common theme in the Skagit Valley today. The public's emotional investment in individual animals, like this pet deer, highlights a perennial conflict over the ethics of hunting in developed rural areas.
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