A BABY deer found forlornly sitting by her dead mum – sound familiar?
Just as in Disney's Bambi, this little deer was left orphaned, and following her rescue by Sasha Norris, the movie giant is showing an interest in this real-life version of the tale.

The deer is called Anna after the princess in another Disney blockbuster, Frozen.
And Sasha, who runs Herefordshire Wildlife Rescue at Bodenham, finds it hard to let her go.

This week, Anna left the barn that’s been the only home she’s known for Magdalen College Deer Park near Oxford.

There, she’s re-discovering the life she was born into, and had so nearly succumbed to when Sasha found her alone only days old at Goodrich, near Ross-on-Wye, bleating by her dead mum.

And here she is being released:

“I have been in floods of tears giving up this beautiful creature, she licked the tears from my face,” said Sasha.

“But she will have other deer around her, sky above her, green trees around her and the chance to be a mum herself.”

For the best part of the year, Anna  has been one of the family. When the family went on a camping holiday to Wales, Anna came too.

Sasha, a zoologist experienced in handling a range of animals, had never reared a deer before.

“We were apprehensive, but excited, with this beautiful animal in our care,”  said Sasha.

“We looked after her diligently, feeding her milk twice a day, cleaning, collecting vegetation and, when it came to going on holiday, we took her with us,” she said.

Anna found a “sister” in Elsa, the family’s pet Hebridean sheep - named after Frozen’s other princess.

That gave Sasha the idea of contacting Disney, initially with a request to use songs from Frozen to promote HWR through Anna’s story or commission a related film.

Just days before Anna went away, Disney came back to say  it was interested in doing much more.

“They loved the story,” said Sasha.

The coming months will decide where Disney’s interest goes.

Longer term, Sasha can see Anna in Bodenham again as an “ambassador”  for both her species, and wild woodlands, at the wildlife education centre she’s working to set up.

But should Anna show she wants to be “home” sooner, Sasha’s on standby .