Fawns and Flora : Deer Are Making Themselves at Home in Whittier Cemetery

Rex Owens recently drove by his father-in-law’s grave at Rose Hills Memorial Park, expecting to see flowers his wife left there the day before.

Instead, Owens found seven deer clustered around the grave, busily munching on the blossoms to the sound of freeway traffic less than a mile away. What would be an incongruous sight to some came as no surprise to Owens, park supervisor of the enormous Whittier cemetery.

For behind Rose Hills’ carefully groomed lawns lies one of Los Angeles County’s largest parcels of undeveloped land, about 2,200 acres of the Puente Hills that serve as an unofficial refuge for deer, birds and other wildlife.

“This time of year the property is so dry and there is nothing for (the deer) to eat,” said Owens, who has worked for Rose Hills since 1960. “They come inside the park, and once they come in here they become tame. . . . We’ve even had people come in for a service and have deer standing there.”

The cemetery property is home to about 25 deer, which spend most of their time in the hills hidden from the city below. Rose Hills began with 18 acres in 1914 and now owns 2,500 acres, the bulk of which remains undeveloped. The cemetery’s bright green lawns slope up from Workman Mill Road to a peak where the block letters of Rose Hills’ pink neon sign glow at night.

But behind the sign are hills and valleys untouched by sprinkler systems, brown inclines dotted by patches of prickly pear cactus bearing crimson-colored fruit. Narrow roads, some paved and some not, wind through the canyons below rocky peaks the color of milky coffee.

More than 100 coyotes once stalked these hills, Owens said, but the animals are gradually disappearing. “Ten years ago, they would be running across the lawn in broad daylight,” Owens said. “Now I hardly ever see a coyote.”

But there are plenty of other animals around, including rabbits, skunks, ground squirrels, opossums and hawks. “The crows dive-bomb the hawks,” Owens said. “The mockingbirds are doing the same thing to the crows. You can hear them in the air.”

In the 1970s, the management of Rose Hills considered getting rid of the deer, Owens said. Cemetery officials asked the state Department of Fish and Game to tranquilize and relocate the animals, and also received permits to kill 12 deer, but did not follow through.

“We really didn’t want to go that route,” Owens said. “We haven’t done anything much about them in the last 10 years. We figured it wasn’t that much use.”

In addition to the uncultivated wildlife of the hills, which are off-limits to visitors, the cemetery also maintains a rose garden and a one-acre artificial lake that is home to dozens of ducks and tropical fish. Rose Hills does not get many deer-seeking sightseers, Owens said, but the lake is a popular spot.

‘Thinks It’s a Park’

Eloisa Huereque of Whittier regularly brings her 2-year-old granddaughter to the lake to feed the orange, white and brown fish. “I don’t have anyone (buried) here,” she said, “but I think this is a nice place. So nice and peaceful . . . My granddaughter thinks it’s a park.”

May and Hank Nakano of Los Angeles go to Rose Hills weekly to visit the grave of their daughter and always take a sack of bread to feed the ducks. Sometimes the ducks nibble at the flowers May Nakano leaves on the grave.

“I can share the flowers with them,” she said, as about 10 mallard ducks clamored around her for more bread. “I don’t mind.”

Not all those who visit Rose Hills are as tolerant as the Nakanos. A Rose Hills spokeswoman said some family members become upset upon finding their expensive floral arrangements half-eaten by the resident wildlife. The cemetery’s policy is to reimburse family members for the flowers.

The complaints are infrequent, Owens said. He believes most people just want to know what happened to their flowers. Once animals are identified as the culprits, “they think it’s great,” he said. “Someone had a relative buried here who was a hunter and when he found out, he said, ‘He would have loved that. He loved deer.’ ”