Not every day are deputies with the King County Sheriff’s Office dealing with criminals.

On a recent Saturday, a sheriff’s deputy and a wildlife officer from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife worked together to hopefully reunite a fawn and its mother southeast of Renton.

The reunion began with a phone call from wildlife officer Wendy Willette to sheriff’s deputy Julie Loofbourow. Willette had a call about kids carrying a fawn around the neighborhood. Both officers headed for the location, a trailer park near Southeast 180th Street and the Cedar Grove Road.

Their initial interviews led them to a trailer, where they found a boy who was pulling the fawn around in a baby cart behind his bicycle, according to John Urquhart, a Sheriff’s Office spokesman.

The boy told the officers he found the fawn along the nearby Cedar Grove Trail and decided to take it home, via a tour of the neighborhood first.

The fawn wasn’t very alert, so Loofbourow put him in the front seat of her air-conditioned patrol car, according to Urquhart. Willette found a baby bottle and they gave water to the fawn, who by now was very thirsty.

The two officers tried to place the deer back where he was found, but there were too many people around. So they picked a secluded area with deer tracks not far away, according to Urquhart. The hope was mother would be back and find her baby.

When they checked back the next day, the fawn was gone, according to Urquhart.

Urquhart said the lesson from the state is that fawns are most commonly discovered alone and assumed to be abandoned or orphaned, then picked up by humans.

However, the advice is to leave the fawn alone, because the mother is likely just nearby and will return.