Secret of ghostly mule deer revealed

Secret of ghostly mule deer revealed

'I'll make a million with it,' predicts specimen's owner

Ben Gelinas
CanWest News Service
Monday, May 22, 2006

CREDIT: Greg Southam, CanWest News Service
Greg Szewaga with a rare albino mule deer shot 35 years ago in Alberta.

Greg Szewaga has a secret.

At first he kept it in storage; now it's in a glass showcase next to the
gym equipment in his basement.

And its hooves are like frosted glass.

"You're not going to believe this," Szewaga turns to say, nearly stumbling
over the stairs as he hurries to reveal his treasure.

Fifteen years ago, the Edmonton rig welder was up near Bonnyville building
a gas plant. Rumours swirled among the boys at the site about an albino
mule deer, white as salt, shot on a cloudy November evening in 1970 by a
farmer in Iron River.

The farmer had the animal stuffed by Wolf's taxidermy in Edmonton and kept
its existence a secret for fear of what characters -- and lawmen -- it
might bring to his doorstep.

The farmer was convinced he'd done something wrong, killing such a rare
animal and being vain enough to preserve the evidence.

Szewaga, an animal lover and former hunter, had to see it for himself.

"It took me six weeks to track the farmer down," says Szewaga. And when he
was sure he had found the right man, the farmer refused to admit he knew
anything about an albino doe.

So Szewaga offered to spend evenings welding on the farm, if only for a
chance to ask the farmer: "You wouldn't have that white deer, would you?"

The farmer's wife would blush every time the albino doe came up, until one
evening over tea, she caved: "Aw, tell him."

"My heart just went crazy," says Szewaga.

One look and he had to have it.

The farmer eventually agreed to let the deer go, weary from 20 years of
keeping its existence quiet. Szewaga won't reveal what he paid, but says
he offered five times what the farmer asked.

"I'll make a million with it," said Szewaga, who plans to sell the deer or
take it on the road as an exhibit.

>From birth, nature seemed to conspire against the doe. Its coat was hardly
proper camouflage against greenery. Its bones and hooves were brittle, and
its pink eyes were hypersensitive to light.

"An albino deer is half to almost totally blind," says Szewaga. "Usually
its mother will abandon it shortly after birth."

Somehow the deer, which Szewaga's wife named Crystal, lived over two years
before the farmer shot it.

As it turns out, killing an albino mule deer is not illegal.

A deer is a deer, no matter what colour, says Dave Ealey, spokesman for
Alberta Sustainable Resource Development.

Albinism is especially rare in mule deer, says retired biologist Bill
Wisherd, who first spoke with Szewaga years ago when Wisherd was still
working for Alberta Fish and Wildlife.

Before Szewaga's doe, Wisherd had never heard of an albino mule deer. Even
white deer are unusual.

"Surveyors will occasionally see a white deer, but it's extremely,
extremely rare," says Ealey.

"The number of times they've seen them can be counted on one hand."

Because surveyors work from the air, it's impossible to tell if an animal
is albino or just white. Ealey says he's never heard of a mule deer proven
albino, but Szewaga's sounds genuine.

Szewaga is convinced the doe is a true albino. The taxidermy papers say
so.