Another day, another out-of-place animal amuses Russian commuters. A video from a satellite city near Moscow shows a deer busying its way down a large street, much to the excitement of eyewitnesses.
The footage, published on Thursday on Russian social media, shows an unusual encounter in the city of Korolyov, located near the Russian capital. A deer was shown strolling carefully towards car traffic before crossing over to the sidewalk and making its way deep into a residential area. The excited cameraman filming the deer from inside a car can be heard repeatedly exclaiming the Russian version of “I’ll be damned!” as his vehicle passes by. The encounter reportedly happened on Wednesday morning.
A big city like Moscow is not exactly known for regular wildlife sightings, but the parts to its northeast , including the satellite city Korolyov, are something of an exception. It borders the largest urban park in Europe, the Losiny Ostrov (“Elk Island” in Russian). An estimated population of 200 red deer make their home on the 125 square kilometers of the natural reserve.
Gorky Street, where the deer was spotted, is about 1.5 km from the border of the Losiny Ostrov, so imagining a stray deer wandering off to make a small traffic disruption is hardly a stretch. Deer, moose and boars are regularly spotted in the area and occasionally get caught on camera.
Earlier this week, a brown bear was filmed chasing a man down the street of a Western Siberian city. She was reportedly not a stray however, but a pet who’d managed to escape her cage, and went on to scare the residents of Nizhnevartovsk a little bit.
