Last Thursday night on my way home from work, I was riding on the bike trail. As I was approaching the bridge, my co-worker and I saw three large mammals standing in the middle of the bridge. We assumed they were big dogs, but as we came up on the animals we saw that they were deer. When we came within a bike-length of the deer, one of them jumped over the bridge railing and into the river. The other two deer took off in a reasonable direction down the bridge away from us, but the brave little deer thought the only option to avoid us riding our bikes past it was to jump in the river. My co-worker and I were in shock at the site of the deer potential giving up on life to stay away from us.  We stopped to see what happened, and that's when I found out that deer can swim.