It wasn't an ordinary call last night for the members of the Manitou Park Volunteer Fire Company.

A Silver Ridge Park resident called police around 11 p.m., after she heard an animal crying in a storm drain at the intersection of Westport Drive and Oakfield Road, said Manitou Park Fire Chief Will Jubert.

When firefighters arrived, they quickly determined that a newborn fawn had fallen through the grate of a storm drain. The fawn's mother was hovering nearby, he said.

"She wasn't happy," Jubert said. "She was about a block away."

Firefighters used pry bars and a few other tools to open the grate and pull it back, he said.

Then firefighter Kevin Curry descended a ladder and rescued the fawn, which was sitting in about six inches of water. He wrapped the baby deer up and came back up the ladder.

"It didn't really appear to be hurt," Jubert said. "But it was probably a newborn. It could barely walk. It had a rough first day."

While firefighters replaced the grate, the mother deer appeared and the two "went off together," he said.

The Berkeley Township fire company has rescued animals from storm drains before, but this was the first deer, Jubert said.

"We do ducks every year," he said. "We did have a puppy we saved. But never a deer."