Unlikely Friendships : 47 Remarkable Stories From the Animal Kingdom (16 page)

The mouflon is an old male that was a hoofed Casanova in his younger days, with many mates of his own kind. But living among the eland, what is a lonely male sheep to do?

“He follows this one female eland passionately!” Terry says. “When she stops to graze, he will gently paw at her rear leg with his front foot, as if trying to coax her to come down to his level. After all, he is quite a bit shorter than she.” Then, when she lies down, the sheep acts the gentleman, lying quietly next to her.

Only the one eland has grabbed the sheep's attention; he never bothers with the other females. “People think that the affair is cute,” Terry says, “but obviously it will go nowhere.” And with the mouflon already beyond his expected lifespan of twenty years, he no longer keeps up with his girlfriend as he once did, making his advances even less effective.

The eland, for her part, can be aloof—standing around chewing her cud, back turned to her suitor—but she seems content enough to be admired. “I think the mouflon is just happy she tolerates him,” Terry says. “But most important to us, she keeps him mobile, which is why he's still around.”

{O
HIO
, U.S.A., 2009}

Meet Dille, the coffee-drinking, bed-hogging, dog-loving “house deer” that has become an oversize member of veterinarian Melanie Butera's menagerie in suburban Ohio.

When the farm-bred white-tailed deer came to the Elm Ridge Animal Hospital in Canal Fulton, Ohio, she was a very sick little animal, unable to eat or stand up on her bony legs. She was also virtually blind from a birth defect. Melanie ultimately decided to care for the deer at home, a household already heavily populated with a husband, two children, poodle Lady, cats Spaz and Neffie, and bird Screamie, not to mention a barnyard's worth of animals outside.

With the exception of Screamie, who got a poor introduction to
Dillie when the deer grabbed her by the tail feathers and tossed her, everyone in the house has grown to love Dillie. The cats approve of her warmth when they curl up next to her, and are happy to let the deer groom them from head to tail. But Lady is Dillie's best friend. Says Melanie, “Lady was a great comfort to Dillie those first weeks, letting the scared little deer lie next to her on the couch or bed as she licked her down. Now, Dillie licks the poodle on the back or head, and sometimes nibbles her ears.” At the nipping, “Lady might snarl a little and play-bite her,” but the response does no harm. As a game, Lady likes to steal stuffed animals from Dillie and proudly carry them around, finally leaving them in the deer's path so she'll stumble across them later.

There's also a bit of dog–deer mischief to report. Despite Dillie's impaired vision, at Lady's bidding she'll grab bags of snacks from high shelves for the two to gobble down. Lady will try to steal food from Dillie, who boasts a surprisingly sophisticated palate that includes an appreciation for spaghetti, ice cream, coffee with a lot of milk, and, as a special treat, roses (which she crunches through like candy). And of course, as deer are wont to do, she happily destroys every plant in the Buteras' yard as Lady lazes about nearby.

For a time both Dillie and Lady tried to share their owner's bed at night. “I am a night owl,” says Melanie,
“and would come to bed after everyone else was already positioned, and sometimes couldn't even find a spot.” She also suffered the deer's hooves digging into her back. Luckily, the animals resolved the issue on their own. Feeling the squeeze, Lady found a spot on an extra bed in the room, and Dillie took over a guest room elsewhere in the house. Now, Lady often joins the deer in “her” room for a nap, even when all beds are open.

Interestingly, Dillie is afraid of other dogs, even tiny puppies. “She'll fluff up her tail and stomp her feet” if any canine but Lady gets too close, Melanie says. But that's never been the case with Lady. “Dillie grew up with Lady and sees her as family.”

{F
LORIDA
, U.S.A., 2008}

Koko got all the press, but the famous gorilla isn't the only big ape to find solace in a cat. Consider Tonda, an orangutan who lived at ZooWorld in Panama City, Florida, for eleven years. She was never known for her sweet nature; beyond the occasional hand-holding or furtive smooch, even she and her mate weren't terribly affectionate. But when the male died, Tonda began to realize her loss and entered a slow decline in appetite and enthusiasm for life. The ZooWorld staff gave her plenty of activities to enrich her days, from playing with toys to painting canvasses, but her interest waned and she became sullen. With no new mate available for the old girl, keepers decided to find her a friend of another kind.