WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ... CRYSTAL THE DEER : Return to the wild
Posted on Monday, September 22, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/bcdr/News/65990/
BENTONVILLE — Surrounded by 100 acres of heavily wooded, rolling property, construction workers erecting the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art spot interesting wildlife every day.
While pouring cement and operating heavy machinery and the two cranes that tower over the site, the crew sees families of deer daily. While breaking for lunch, it’s nothing to see a snake, a hawk or even an armadillo. On more than one occasion, workers have even spotted a bear. But there’s one animal nobody working at the site in June 2007 will soon forget.
Step inside the temporary construction office of Linbeck / Nabholz, along Northeast J Street, and among the smattering of maps, permits and other information pinned to the bulletin board, you’ll find a couple of photographs of a fawn. This isn’t just any fawn.
It’s Crystal.
And while none of the crew has seen the animal in more than a year, everyone still remembers her name — mainly because of the poor condition in which she was found.
“ We still talk about Crystal around here, ” said Don Adams, Linbeck / Nabholz project manager at the Crystal Bridges site. “ She was in rough shape. A lot of the guys thought she probably wouldn’t have made it another night. ”
Not only was Crystal small because she was a fawn, but she was severely underweight. Her body was covered with ticks, which brought on infection and, apparently, abandonment. Adams believes the fawn was so overcome by ticks that it could no longer keep up with its mother.
“ There were ticks on its eyes — on its face — everywhere, ” Adams said. “ Some of the spots had swelled to the size of golf balls. She couldn’t see. ”
The Linbeck / Nabholz crew took Crystal to Sugar Creek Animal Hospital in Bentonville and, from there, the fawn was transported to Lynn Sciumbato, who runs Morning Star Wildlife Rehabilitation in Gravette. While Sciumbato does not recall how long it took Crystal to recover, she is proud to report that the fawn made a complete recovery and was released into the wild somewhere between Gravette and Centerton last year.
“ She hung around for a while, even after she was recovered, ” Sciumbato said. “ They all do. But pretty soon, they take off. You always worry a little bit when you stop seeing them around. But the good thing is she decided to move on — to go back into the wild. They don’t all make it out there, even if they haven’t come into contact with people. But she was as healthy and strong and had as good a chance as any. ”
When Crystal arrived, however, it was anything but a positive situation.
“ She came in in pretty bad shape, ” Sciumbato said. “ I’ve had a lot of deer come in the past couple of years, just covered with ticks. Her eyes were swelled shut. There was secondary infection from so many tick bites, and she had become extremely weak. ”
Tending to sick, injured and tick-infested wildlife is nothing new for Sciumbato.
Sciumbato doesn’t get a lot of sleep, but that’s by choice. By day, she’s a teacher in the Rogers School District. When she gets home from her day job, she is the one-woman show behind Morning Star Wildlife Rehabilitation. On any given night and nearly every weekend, she finds herself helping sick or injured owls, possum, squirrel, deer, hawks and more.
“ I normally see 400 to 500 animals (mammals and birds combined ) in a year, ” Sciumbato said. “ I take in any sick or injured native wildlife. I’m a nonprofit organization, but I don’t get paid for it. I don’t go on a lot of vacations and stay pretty wrapped up with school and these animals, but I think someone has to do it. I love animals. ”
Sciumbato explained that in Crystal’s case, she began pulling ticks one by one from the fawn. Sciumbato then treated the sores and used an antibiotic to kill off the many ticks that were either too close to the fawn’s eyes or were unreachable by human hands. Each day, Sciumbato bottlefed the fawn, as it began to put on weight and return to health. Before long, Crystal had her sight back, and she joined a few other fawns that were recovering at the center in an open outdoor area.
“ I was so happy to see (Crystal ) bounce back the way she did, ” Sciumbato said. “ There have been a lot of deer in here in recent years. I’ve been doing this for 21 years, and when I began, I was the only one permitted in this area. I’m real lucky there are a few other mammal rehab permit holders around now. That’s really helped take some of the pressure off. ”
The line of injured and sick animals brought through Sciumbato’s door changes almost daily, but she somehow manages to remember a little something about each one of them, Crystal included.