What happened to the small white deer in San Diego?

Matmail:

What do you know about a fabled white deer that used to hang out in Balboa Park?

-- Rick, the net

I guess the white deer must be achieving fable status, because the details of the story are already beginning to mutate. In another generation, people will be asking to hear the story of the fabled pink weasel of Dehesa.

The white deer hung out at Presidio Park, not Balboa Park. Lucy, her name was, one of a pair of white fallow deer. They say the two were pets that escaped in the late '60s, though the fate of the male is unknown. Lucy spent almost ten years eating flowers in Mission Hills gardens and browsing through the park. The Alices were tootling along near the Taylor Street off-ramp from I-8 one foggy morning and saw Lucy contemplating the commuters from the edge of the road. It was this habit of wandering too near Mission Valley traffic that led to her demise. In December of 1975, Animal Control decided to move her to safer surroundings, so they tranquilized her with one of those darts. Unfortunately the very small deer got a little too tranquil. She's buried on Inspiration Point.