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A large buck was stuck in a northwest Harris County pool Monday afternoon.

The house is near Champions Forest Drive and FM 1960 in the Greenwood Forest Subdivision.

Neighbors called 911 when they spotted the buck in the water and realized it couldn't get out.

"He was getting very tired. He was swimming pretty frantically. he was swimming back and forth," said neighbor Erin Konkel. "If he had come over here, he could have gotten out on the steps which could have been a little dangerous for us."

Responders from various agencies responded to find a fine specimen of a buck. Something you'd expect to see in an issue of Field and Stream -- not in a suburban swimming pool.

Konkel, who captured the deer with her digital video camera, said the deer was in the pool for nearly ninety minutes.

The ordeal apparently began in a backyard a few blocks away -- the result of a turf war. Two adversaries vying for the affections of a lovely young doe.

It is mating season, you know.

KHOU-TV

The buck was swimming in a backyard pool.

"There was two bucks that were fighting and one of them broke a window at somebody's house and the two deer separated," said Konkel. "And the guy down the street was working on his motorcycle and saw the deer running by."

"I was like, what the hell was that?" said Mike Moreno.

Moreno followed the deer where he watched it jump a six-foot fence, clearing it easily. The pool was on the other side.

"He was swimming just frantically. gonig around the pool. We thought about trying to take him out," said Moreno. "The other guy grabbed him by the antlers, but if he gets out there's no where to to."

Ultimately, Parks and Wildlife employees and constables from Precinct 4 managed to wrangle the buck to the side of the pool, rope him and load him onto a truck.

"Oh, he was beautiful. Beautiful horns, large horns," said Betty Sullivan, another resident. "He was beautiful."

Unfortunately, the buck had to be euthanized. Parks and Wildlife workers said he was already dying from stress and exhaustion when he was retrieved from the pool.

The department also warns we'll be seeing more of this as development encroaches on the natural habitat of deer. They said this deer simply had no other place to go.