“This is my house upstate in the Catskills. And I feed the deer. I have a lot of photos of feeding the deer with my hand. One day, I just stepped out of my house and [a baby deer] was right in front of the porch. So I grabbed him and put him inside, and then I realized the mother wasn’t around. But someone said, ‘No. They give birth and the mother leaves. And when the baby is dry, she comes back.’ [But because] I put a human smell on the baby, the mother didn’t come back. So I had to start feeding him with a baby bottle. And then he grew up. I let him [live] in the wild. And he still comes to the house and I feed him with lettuce. The day I found him there was a thunderstorm, so I call him Storm.”
Satelice’s dog Hugo and deer Storm cohabitating peacefully.
Mauricio Santelice is the Executive Pastry Chef at Bodega Negra.
Interview by Kara Chin; first photo by Battman, second and third by Kara Chin, deer photos courtesy of Mauricio Santelice
