Three Rye agencies spent two hours on Thursday, July 2, freeing a fawn that had fallen into a storm drain in the Clamtown neighborhood, using an improvised water-flow technique after discovering a raccoon was also trapped in the pipe.

Resident Lynne Jordal Martin heard bleating from her bedroom around 3 p.m. Thinking it might be a bird or a cat stuck in a tree, she crossed the street and peered into a storm drain.

"I thought, well, that's a really large cat — an amber colored cat," Martin told the Rye Record. She quickly realized the animal was a small fawn she had spotted in her yard the day before.

Martin called Rye Police after the fawn moved deeper into the drain. Officers responded alongside the city's Department of Public Works and the Rye Fire Department.

By the time firefighters arrived, the fawn had crawled from the catch basin into the connecting pipe, roughly four to six feet from the opening, according to Rye Fire Department Lt. Ryan Iarocci.

Crews initially planned to reach in and grab the animal. That changed fast.

"We were originally going to try to grab it from down in the storm drain, but the way that it was positioned, it wasn't possible," Iarocci told the Rye Record. "And luckily, they didn't do that, because right behind the baby fawn in the storm drain was a raccoon."

Instead, firefighters opened a second drain farther down the road and sent a gentle stream of water through the pipe to coax the fawn back toward the exit grate. The combination of flowing water and the raccoon's presence behind it was enough motivation. The fawn fled through the open grate, and a crew member picked it up and placed it in Martin's yard.

The rescue unfolded during a regional heat wave that brought heat-index values above 100 degrees to the New York area on July 2, according to the National Weather Service. Martin and her neighbors believe the fawn entered the drain looking for water.

Neighbor Janice Clowe, who also lives in Clamtown, said she did not see the fawn reunite with its mother but spotted what appeared to be the mother deer in the neighborhood later that same day.