Editor’s note: Rachel Flynn, who lives with her husband Cody just north of Hix Bridge on the East Branch, sent us this good news over the weekend:

Hi! I wanted to share a wonderful story from Thursday morning.

My husband went outside around 7 a.m. at our home and saw a deer who had fallen in the ice in the Westport River just behind our home.

Growing up on this river and having skated on the same patch of ice this past weekend, he knew exactly where it was frozen and quickly ran out to assess the situation and see how the doe was doing. We couldn’t just leave her out there despite there being no clear path to her.

He attempted many times to walk out to her but with the ice being so thin with a patch of open water, he couldn’t get close enough to reach her. Her initial instinct every time was to swim farther away and she was quickly using up what little energy she had left.

He ran home to grab a kayak and tried to reach her by breaking the ice and paddling over but each time she would try to pull herself onto the ice, her front hooves would slip or fall through. In a final attempt, he lassoed a rope and it made its way around her. He was able to pull her up and away from the cracking ice and he brought her all the way to our back yard.

We didn’t think she would make it. He dried her off, wrapped her in towels, and brought an extension cord and our heated blanket to warm her up. She had icicles all over her body and was in shock but she quickly responded to the heat and started to cuddle with him and soon was resting like our dog with her head on his lap.

After a few hours of warming up and frequent check-ins, she stood up on her own and ran back to her home in the woods in the afternoon. A new best friend!