Just got a note from an uncle about an albino fawn...supposedly this story and the photos originate from Georgia but I don't always trust what I see on the Web. These look ok. Of course the article goes on to say how the driver of a car saw the fawn on the road in front of him, thought it was a small goat, and got out to check on it. And as typical human intervention goes, the writer saw no doe, assumed the usual "orphan deer" mindset, and took it home. Luckily it is headed to a rehabber/wildlife facility and not still living in a bedroom somewhere, but still....

Anyway, I got to thinking about my own albino encounters and I'd have to say that the housefly at my parent's place was the weirdest. I was sitting in the kitchen and this thing buzzed past my head and I saw it was a strange looking fly. I recall thinking "...eeew, mom needs to cover the bread flour" because it was a dusty white color, and mom has a certain bread machine fetish and there's always flour out.....Anyway, for some reason I decided to catch the little fellow and I have to say it surely wouldn't have lasted long in the outdoors. It was like chasing a neon sign around the room. I finally got it cornered and into a mason jar and then came the big surprise: it wasn't a floured-up fly, it was an ALBINO fly. It had the weird colored eyes, although I don't recall them being pink necessarily---maybe a pinkish cast but I can't remember. Its entire body was white though, except the wings which were a delicate smoky whitish-grey. That's been the only true albino creature I can recall seeing. There have been several white animals, but they all had a t least a bit of normal coloration somewhere on them. Olney, just north of here, has a population of white squirrels, but I can't recall if they are true albinos or not. We had a pair of white white-tailed deer east of our house several years ago-saw them personally-but I know one of them got shot and left to rot and the other I'm not sure of. But I have not seen them since so I assume they met a sinister fate.

Why you would shoot a white deer and leave it anyway???techincally, if you had a valid permit it was legal since the deer had a brown spot on its chest, but....not like it took a hunter of mighty prowess to get that job done. Could shoot a snow white deer at midnight for petes sake.

But anyway, got any decent albinism sightings??

Or melanism, for that matter?? Please leave out any "black panther" stories...I'm quite tired of all those local urban legends by now.