If you’ve been at Berry for any period of time, chances are
you’ve seen one of the infamous Berry deer. Residents here will tell you the
absurd-sounding statistic that there are eight deer for every student and
you’ll laugh thinking they’re just being sarcastic or joking around. Well let
me tell you something—they’re not.
When I first came to Berry and saw my first Berry deer, I
thought, “Oh. Hey this is really neat! They’ve got all sorts of cool wildlife
on campus. My friends will be so jealous!” And it was really neat for the first couple of days or so when I had only
seen three or four deer together at one time.
Right now at Berry we’ve got all the little speckled fawns
prancing around with their mamas… so cute! But then as I started tallying up
days as a resident I began to notice that the “exaggeration” of the current
Berry students wasn’t actually a joke. In fact, it was the complete opposite.
You don’t notice them at first. They’re quite sneaky, Berry
deer are. You’ll be strolling along in the bright Georgia sun, reveling in the
beauty and charm of the Berry campus and then suddenly a deer appears!
I’ve been here at Berry for a short while and I can tell you confidently that deer are sneaky little creatures. You’ll
see one and then all of the sudden that number has increased to 10. You do a
double take and that number has rapidly increased to 40, right out of the blue!
I’m not sure how or why they do it—whether their sneakiness is
purposeful, or if it’s just in their nature. At first I thought that Berry deer
were some unique breed of deer that were just more advanced than others because
they live on this great big wildlife sanctuary and educational haven.
The deer are also pretty fearless. One student told me a
story of his friend who one day thought, “Hey, I’m going to spook the deer. It
will be awesome!” He got on his bike and rode into a huge field of deer hootin’
and hollerin.’ The deer did nothing. Needless to say the friend was somewhat
disappointed with the lack of skittishness in the deer, but his experience
serves as a lesson to the wise—don’t mess with Berry deer. They are fearless.
Another interesting tale I heard about our fearless Berry
bucks was about the buck that saw his reflection in the doors of one of the Science
building a few years back. Apparently he charged straight through the glass and
into a hallway. Fearless or just plain dumb—the world will never know.
Regardless, Berry deer are something else. If the rumor
holds true that there are 8 deer for every student, with Berry having roughly
1900 students, that’s a population of 15,200 deer on campus. It’s no wonder
they’re everywhere.