At a plant surrounded by development and heavy traffic, where clay is mined and baked to build more houses and businesses, Acme Brick truck drivers are fostering a small bit of nature in their own backyard.
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"They baby those deer," office manager Tony Pope said. "They don't even wait for it to be too hot or too cold before they leave some feed or carrots or bales of hay or something. They love to take care of their deer."
A few years ago the drivers who deliver Acme Brick noticed three or four whitetail deer had somehow gotten through the fence onto company property. The plant on Memorial Road sits on about 80 acres, which includes massive pits supplying the red clay that makes Oklahoma brick so valuable. Much of the land around the pit is undeveloped, providing plenty of tall grass and trees to protect the wildlife.
The drivers started bringing food for the deer, which proved to be enough incentive for the animals to stay on the grounds from season to season. No one knows whether they're the same deer or relatives who come and go, Pope said.
"But every year we've got a new crop of babies."
The deer are just another reminder that for all the buildings and fences that define the metro area now, nature was here first, said Casey Wieczorek, assistant naturalist at Martin Park Nature Center. The 140-acre city park is in much the same situation as the Acme Brick plant, surrounded by housing and businesses right off of Lake Hefner Parkway.
Oklahoma City parks spokeswoman Jennifer McClintock said the city has received offers to buy the parcels for development, but those deals have been declined.
"We work hard to keep this a sanctuary for wildlife. A city needs areas that are kept pristine," McClintock said. "And once we educate them as to what happens in the park, they kind of see the point."
Wieczorek said people often ask her about snakes they kill on their properties, fearing the worst. But the victims are usually brown snakes and rat snakes, she said, helpful in keeping vermin under control. Other people with good intentions try to rescue found baby animals only to learn that the parent likely would have come back to the nest in time, Wieczorek said.
In other words, leave nature alone, she said.
"Interference is a bigger issue. It's more like they've always been here and we moved in on them," she said of wild animals. "As we've built up around them, they've gotten used to navigating roads and getting around fences. They've got to eat and get to water and raise their babies, after all."
Predatory birds such as kites have even adapted to downtown life, Wieczorek said, hunting for sparrows from the roofs of high-rise buildings. And Canada geese, which have been growing in number for several years, are actually attracted to the manicured lawns of corporate office building campuses, said Mark Howery at the state Department of Wildlife Conservation. Unlike most geese, Canada geese like to dine on young grasses. So weekly mowing are akin to laying out a smorgasbord for the birds, he said.
Urban wildlife is here to stay, Wierczorek said. City animal control officers will not capture non-threatening indigenous wildlife, such as an opossum that wanders too far from a drainage ditch, although they will loan live-capture traps to residents for relocating animals, she said.
And anyone bothered by the piles of waste left in the wake of a flock of migratory Canada geese would need to check with federal authorities before making a move on the animals, Howery said.
State law also prohibits the gathering of most wildlife except during specific, licensed hunting seasons. Municipal ordinances can be made to work around those rules, but rarely do, Howery said. Besides that, laws prohibit weapon use within city limits. And Acme Brick would prosecute anyone who trespasses to harass the resident wildlife, Pope said.
But the Acme Brick deer aren't being watched over by just the plant workers, she said.
"We've had Enterprise (car rental company) across the street comment that they love to watch them, and the people to our east side have actually put some benches in their yard," Pope said. "One time someone driving in the area actually called us in a tizzy, because they saw someone pull off the side of the road and it looked like they were out to shoot them."
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