Rare Animal Shocks Homeowners by Triggering Their Doorbell Camera, Revealing Creature’s Unusual Coat

An intruder left Pennsylvania homeowners stunned.

According to WNEP, on Nov. 21, a couple was at their East Stroudsburg home when their doorbell camera was triggered by someone approaching the front door. The homeowners reviewed the footage and found that a group of white-tailed deer sniffing the gourds on the home’s porch had triggered the camera. Only one of the deer was more white than the others.

By chance, a rare piebald deer was among the brown and grey animals. According to the Deer Association, Piebald deer are born with a genetic mutation that causes white patches of fur to appear among the brown and gray fur typical of a white-tailed deer. The amount of white present on piebald deer varies from animal to animal. Piebald is different from Albinism, a genetic mutation that causes an animal to appear all white with pink eyes.

The Deer Association noted that roughly 1 to 2 percent of white-tailed deer are born with the piebald mutation, making the animals exceptionally rare.

The piebald deer seen in Walter Busby’s doorbell camera footage, which the homeowner provided to Storyful, is primarily white, with darker spots on its flanks and ears.

In the clip, the piebald deer appears with several other white-tailed deer, and all the animals sniff around Busby’s yard, especially near the festive pumpkins on the porch. The piebald deer shows a keen interest in the white pumpkin outside the house.

Busby says since spying the rare deer for the first time, and being left confused and charmed by the animal’s unique coat, the piebald deer has appeared around his home several more times.

“The deer has visited frequently,” Busby told Storyful. “The first time we saw it, we were on vacation, and everybody was guessing if it was a dog, a deer, or a goat?”

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This is far from the first time a doorbell camera has captured a rare animal moment. In Dec. 2022, a doorbell camera in Alaska caught the “once-in-a-lifetime” moment of a massive moose shedding its antlers.

Moose shed their antler annually, but the act usually goes unseen by human eyes, because it happens in the wild during the dark nights of winter.