Animal Whisperer: Take Back My Life and Love Chapter 455: A Stroke of Foolish Luck

The deer continued its piteous tale. "My rabbit friends, the squirrels, and even the little doe that usually comes for water are all gone! Even my favorite skating rink, this shiny flat ground, has no other deer to play with me!"

At this point, the deer suddenly puffed out its furry chest, its tone carrying a touch of stubborn idiocy. "But the more it stayed like this, the more I wanted to figure it out! Why is everyone gone? Why do I feel like turning tail and running whenever I get close? It just isn't right!"

It looked toward the ice, its eyes filled with the determination of a persistent bystander. "So, I just... I took a deep breath and held it! Then I just charged in! Even though my nose keeps itching and my heart is thumping, look at me! I successfully reached the scene of the accident... I mean, the research site!"

Nancy felt a wave of amused sympathy for Professor Langstrom.

The man had exhausted his genius to create a sophisticated animal repellent, only to have his grand plan derailed by the pure, unadulterated stubbornness of a roe deer. It was a variable no amount of scientific calculation could have predicted. It was as if he had built an impenetrable fortress, only for a fool of a deer to stroll through the front gate because he just felt like having a look.

In a way, it was a stroke of foolish genius.

The deer continued to ramble, dropping an even bigger bombshell. "And I wanted to see if that red fox would show up again. You know, the one that was here the other night with four little shoes on its paws?"

"A red fox wearing shoes?" Nancy’s nerves tightened instantly, and her voice dropped to a whisper.

She was terrified of scaring off this unexpected and crucial lead.

"Yeah!" Seeing Nancy’s interest, the deer grew even more excited. "That red fox was wearing shoes just like yours! It looked so dignified walking around! The best part was that it didn't leave any paw prints on the ground! I thought it was amazing!"

The deer looked enviously at its own sliding hooves, its train of thought veering off in a bizarre direction. "If I could wear shoes that fit that well, would I stop slipping on the ice? I’ve been wanting to ask where it got them and how to find a pair in my size..."

The detail about a fox wearing shoes changed everything. A fox that left no tracks was no animal at all; it was a professional using a specialized disguise or a mechanical mimic to bypass animal intuition and human forensics alike.

Nancy quickly pulled the little guy back before his mind drifted further into the world of deer fashion.

"We can talk about that later!" she asked urgently. "Think carefully. Which direction did the fox come from? And which way did it go?"

The deer straightened its neck and put on a look of extreme gravity, appearing intelligent for exactly three seconds. Its small head turned to the left. "Um... I think it was from this way..."

But before it finished, it hesitated and snapped its head to the right. "No, no... it seemed like it floated over from that way!"

The deer's head swung back and forth like a broken metronome as its initial confidence dissolved into a vortex of confusion. Finally, the deer gave up on thinking altogether. It let out a bubbly, dim witted grin at Nancy.

"Hehe... I forgot."

Meeting that clear yet vacant gaze, Nancy couldn't help but burst into laughter. She gently rubbed its forehead. "It is alright, you’ve already been a huge help, you little scatterbrain."

Unlike the takins or camels she had met before, who seemed to have built in biological navigation, roe deer lacked a sense of direction entirely. Their movements were dictated by their current mood and whatever was right in front of them. If the nose caught an interesting scent or the eyes spotted something new, the legs followed.

As for remembering where they had just come from? That simply did not exist in their world. Their activity patterns were essentially a random walk, a completely different league from migratory birds that could cross half the globe without getting lost. Even though they usually roamed the woods near their homes, they relied on familiarity rather than maps.

Oh, I’ve bumped into this tree before! or Hey, I’ve chewed on this patch of grass! That was the extent of their geographical knowledge.

Worst of all, their emergency protocols in the face of danger were enough to make anyone facepalm. Instead of sprinting in one direction, they would either start running in circles or bolt right back to the place where the trouble started. The result was usually that they failed to lose the predator and ended up lost and dizzy themselves.

The fact that this particular stubborn deer had survived this long was a miracle of life. Truly, fortune favors the foolish, or at least it provides them with a security guard who is willing to save them every single time.