Baby, the unusual part-albino deer whose life was saved by a 90-year-old Conestoga Township woman, has suddenly disappeared.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission, which has ordered the deer's confiscation amid much outrage, showed up to try to capture Baby Tuesday morning.

But even with Irene Brown's calling, the 10-month-old female deer failed to appear, even though it has been showing up three times a day for food handouts from the woman.

In fact, the deer has not been seen since Monday morning, and neighbors suspect it has been shot or someone has taken it to thwart the Game Commission's planned relocation.

 "I think someone has killed her. For a trophy perhaps," said a neighbor who didn't want to be named.

Brown, a widow, thinks Baby has hooked up with wild deer in the wooded area south of Millersville, the neighbor reported. Baby was seen, in fact, walking in front of three wild deer last week.

Neighbors have been driving area roads in search of Baby for the last two days.

The Game Commission, which arrived with a licensed wildlife rehabilitator Tuesday morning in an attempt to tranquilize and capture the deer, is now backing off.

"We'll have to wait and see if the deer shows up again. We're not sure if it's been taken," Chuck Lincoln, law enforcement supervisor of the Game Commission's southeast regional office, said this morning.

The Game Commission originally tried to capture the deer March 21 after one of Brown's neighbors complained the deer was eating his flowers and shrubs. Other neighbors are furious that the man filed a complaint.

Officers told Brown the deer had illegally been taken from the wild and would have to be killed and tested for chronic wasting disease, a fatal disease that's been found in deer in two neighboring states, but not in Pennsylvania.

Ten months ago, a tenant on Brown's property found the deer bleating on the banks of the Conestoga River. The deer, probably abandoned by its mother and starving, had a congenital deformity, a bent spine.

The man took the deer to Brown, who began feeding it in a small pen. Brown says they were given permission to care for the deer, which the Game Commission denies.

Brown says when the Game Commission told her to release the deer in September, she did. But the deer and woman have bonded, and three times a day Baby comes around for hand-fed meals of cabbage, horse feed, bananas and apples.

After plans to kill Baby became public, protests in the form of phone calls and e-mails streamed into newspapers, legislators and even the governor.

There have been offers of funding to build a facility to house the deer and to help Brown fight to keep the deer.

Amid the clamor, the Game Commission announced last week that instead of killing the deer, attempts would be made to capture Baby and have a licensed wildlife rehabilitator re-train the deer so that it could be released into the wild.

The agency denied Brown's request that the deer be taken to the petting zoo at Oregon Dairy, where she could visit it.

Oregon Dairy was willing to take the deer "but they (Game Commission) have a policy they're trying to keep intact," Oregon Dairy co-owner George Hurst said this morning.

Debate continues to swirl around what is best for the deer.

Some feel the deer, now imprinted on humans and with a deformity that keeps it from running fast, cannot ever survive on its own. It would be easy prey for coyotes or even dogs, and would approach any sign of civilization, they maintain.

"That deer will never make it in the wild. I don't care how you try to reverse the love of people," said Stephen Mohr, a former Pennsylvania Game Commissioner from Bainbridge.

But Katherine Dubin-Uhler, whose Pocono Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Stroudsburg would receive Baby, emphatically disagrees.

Deer, she said, "imprint on individuals, not on people in general. That's why the Pennsylvania Game Commission was going to allow us to do this."

She said last year alone the licensed facility took in 27 deer, many of which were illegally cared for by people. Most were released back into the wild.

She noted that even seemingly tame deer can attack, as evidenced in November when a buck raised by a Clinton County couple attacked two neighbors, injuring both.

As cruel as it seems, the best solution might have been to let nature take its course 10 months ago when Baby was found, suggests Jack Hubley, a naturalist from Lititz and host of WGAL TV's "Wild Moments" segment.

"There's a good reason its mom left it. We save them because we're compassionate. But with wildlife, if you're not running on all cylinders, you die."

As for Brown, she has been overwhelmed with calls and has been sick the last few days.

"She's just very sad right now," a neighbor said this morning.

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