“Ladies and gentlemen . . . not all road users are sober. The proof is in the picture,” wrote the Gendarmerie de Saône et Loire on Facebook. Accompanying this warning is a video of a deer running in circles until it physically collapses. It later gets up and acts disoriented. The French police organization further explains that this time of year, some wild animals get “drunk” on things like fermented fruits (a so-called “forest aperitif”), causing erratic behavior.
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“In spring, some wild animals consume buds, fermented fruits or decaying plants . . . & can have totally unpredictable behavior,” the gendarmerie wrote in the May 5th post (in French). “[. . .] The observed behavior may be compatible with fermented plant ingestion disorder, a very well known/very common phenomenon in spring in some cervidae. [. . .] When facing a wild animal with unusual behavior, we keep distance, avoid any approach, and on the road, we double our vigilance.”
Watch out for those drunk deer, folks.
See the hilarious warning and concerning video below (or watch it here).
Header stock image by Andrew Phelps/Getty Images
