By Cheryl Lim

A FATALLY injured sambar deer was found lying on Seletar Expressway on the side of the road towards Central Expressway, causing traffic there to slow to a crawl yesterday morning.

Click on thumbnails below to view more photos. Story continues after photos. (Photos: Stomp, SPCA)

The deer, aged three to four years old, was hit by a vehicle.

After examining it, two veterinarians ascertained that it had been in the same position for four hours since 5am.

They had been sent there at about 9am by their employer, Wildlife Reserves Singapore - which runs the Singapore Zoo and the Night Safari - to examine the deer, after a staff member travelling on the expressway spotted it.

Mr Kumar Pillai, who is the Night Safari's assistant director of zoology, said that the deer had a deep gash near its hip, a "dislodged" right antler and was bleeding from its nose.

The vets euthanised it on the spot because its injuries were too severe. Its carcass was taken to the zoo and incinerated yesterday at an offsite incineration plant dealing with biohazard waste, said Mr Pillai.

The deer was not from the Singapore Zoo or the Night Safari, as it had not been tagged like all its sambar deer, he added.

The National Parks Board provided a hint as to where the deer could have come from.

Its spokesman said that a small population of sambar deer lives in the Central Catchment Nature Reserve. The animals seldom go out in the open but have been seen occasionally.

The Land Transport Authority said that the incident "resulted in long traffic queues along the expressway between 6.30am and 9.30am, and the congestion eased at about 10am".

Teacher Keith Goh, 30, who sent a photograph of the deer to Singapore Press Holdings' citizen-journalism website Stomp, said that the bus he was on was stuck in a "very bad jam that lasted for an hour".

cheryll@sph.com.sg

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