Residents of Denton, Texas are struggling to cope with the newest member to their community… reportedly, there is a ghost deer now roaming the streets. It’s been spotted by several locals, but until now nobody has been able to capture a picture. The city has heard tales of this ghostly apparition for years, but nobody could agree on what exactly they were seeing. It has been primarily described as a strange white creature that wanders through the neighborhoods and amongst the nearby forest.
Truth be told, the deer couldn’t have picked a better place to make its otherworldly home. There are plenty of trees, and it seems to be very, very fast. Everyone knew the ghostly animal existed, but nobody had been able to catch more than a pixelated or grainy image of the creature. Henry Evans has now famously changed all that, and it actually caught him by surprise. He had never expected to see the local myth, but quickly grabbed his camera and began snapping photos.
It looked like an albino moose at first, which would have been a rare find, in itself. But it was too small for a moose… it was a deer with completely white fur. He even snapped a photo of other people witnessing the deer too. There are several photos to provide the proof for what he saw, when he was asked what prompted him to take the photos, he replied that he wanted to provide proof so that his wife would believe him. The photographic evidence serves to provide proof that he was telling the truth. There are now several pictures of the deer – it can be seen wandering the streets in mid-day running down Londonderry Lane at Kingswood, and trotting past a construction worker.
It’s a beautiful animal, and seeing this majestic creature at night is a harrowing experience. Of course, the deer poses no more danger than any other deer you might find in the wild, so is stayed in Denton. And the question about what exactly this animal was continued to weigh heavily on the minds of the people. Wildlife experts identified the creature as an animal commonly found in Europe and Asia, but several have been known to live around Texas. The animal is a fallow deer, and officials believe it escaped from a local ranch, belonging to the family Cervidae, and it is an extremely rare version of the deer. The male deer is more commonly known as a buck while the female deer is known as a doe.
Typically they have four color variants and while it’s often mistakenly referred to as an albino, it technically has a condition known as leucism. It occurs when there is a partial loss of pigmentation, and in contrast to albinism where there is just a loss of melanin, several types of pigmentation are reduced. Many people believed that the animal was an albino elk, but experts are quick to point out that elk are bigger and don’t contain palms in the antlers. The diagnosis is final: it’s definitely a fallow deer. Officials have no plans to attempt to catch it, so this fallow deer will likely continue to haunt its favorite neighborhood and surprise unwitting guests in Denton.
