Meet Pete: Barnegat’s car-riding, bed-loving pet deer from 80 years ago

A classroom pet is common. A town pet, not so much.

But in 1938, spotting the town deer, "Pete," strolling down Barnegat Township's main street would be a completely normal sight, as shown in this newsreel from from nearly eight decades ago.

An archived Chicago Tribune article tells the history behind this beloved town deer. Pete was born on March 19, 1935 and orphaned in a forest fire only hours after birth, but the great citizenry of Barnegat rescued the young buck and named him town pet.

Barnegat man Raymond Becket was the person to rescue Pete from the fire and "rear (him) on a bottle," according to a November 1936 San Jose News article. The Becket family took Pete into their home, even giving him his own mattress.

Only 18 months later, it was common to see Pete begging for cigarettes on hind legs in downtown Barnegat.

"Pete, who is sporting an eighth-inch set of spike horns, is as tame as a dog," reads the  San Jose News story. "Pete gets a daily bottle of milk and a quantity of hay, and will eat a carton of cigaretes for dessert if anyone cares to supply them."

During hunting season, Pete could be seen sporting a large red-checked coat and a necklace holding a plaque reading "This is Barnegat Pete, Barnegat, N.J., children's pet— Don't Shoot!"

The town grew so attached to Pete that when he caught a brief sickness in July of 1936, townspeople at a council meeting called in a village nurse to examine him. After Pete "refused even an ice cream cone," the nurse diagnosed him with loneliness.

"'He's just mighty lonesome" reads the 1936 Chicago Tribune story. "But as soon as the school reopens, he undoubtably will be his regular self."

According to the Ocean County Library, Pete was taken to the Philadelphia Zoo in 1945. Years later, when Mrs. Beckett visited the zoo and called Pete's name, "a deer broke from the pack and put his nose through the bars on Mrs. Beckett's face."

And the legacy of Pete lives on.

In 1998, according to the Asbury Park Press, a Girl Scout troop in Barnegat named two of their stuffed-animal ambassadors after Pete. The stuffed-animals, which served as mascots that they sent to other parts of the country, were named Barnegat Pete Sr. and Pete Jr.