Woman gets 70th birthday surprise with rare albino deer spotting
Deer are not a rare sight on Butler County’s roads. However, the deer Valerie Stapleton saw on Tuesday morning, May 20, was.
She spotted an albino deer.
“I had never seen a white deer before,” Stapleton said. “This is such a rare occurrence for the area.”
According to Stapleton, she and her father were driving to Pittsburgh International Airport that day, as her father was on his way back to Florida.
“I'm in the passenger seat and in this field I see two normal deer and one white deer,” Stapleton said.
The field in question was the backyard of Evans City resident Jane Miller, who lives on Valencia Road. Stapleton’s father, who was driving the car, stopped and turned around, and the two met up with Miller and her husband and told them about their discovery.
“She thought that we were giving a delivery for her. She'd ordered a book or something,” Miller said. “But she was so happy that we came and was so excited that we pointed out the deer. They didn't see the deer and never had before.”
It just so happened that Miller’s 70th birthday was the previous Friday.
“She was on her way to physical therapy and she was about to celebrate her 70th birthday,” Stapleton said. “She was like, ‘This is such a sacred moment for me.’”
An “albino deer” is the result of a rare genetic condition called albinism, which affects roughly one in 20,000 deer. Some cultures, including Native American and Celtic culture, view white deer as sacred. Four U.S. states currently have laws on the books prohibiting the hunting of albino or white deer. Pennsylvania is not among them.
