By Shelley Swift | Daily Reporter
GREENFIELD — A young deer that stands alongside McKenzie Road has made quite a name for herself in Greenfield.
Originally spray-painted gold, the concrete statue has built a legion of admirers who drive by and look to see what crazy costume or accessories she may be sporting on any given day.
Nicknamed “Goldie Fawn,” the little deer even has her own Facebook page.
Goldie was spray-painted green around St. Patrick’s Day, and now sports a face mask. There’s also an empty Corona beer can by her feet.
Although a few people have spotted its owner — Michael Cooper — decorating the deer, the identity of Goldie’s handler had remained widely unknown since she started making an appearance about three years ago.
“I’ve had a lot of people stop me on a regular basis when I’m working in the yard or moving the deer and talk to me about how much they enjoy it,” said Cooper, 56, who lives in the house nearest Goldie’s perch, on the southwest corner of Riverview Drive and McKenzie Road, at the entrance of Waterview Estates.
Goldie’s first life was that of a typical concrete lawn ornament, painted brown, which sat in Cooper’s mom’s yard for many years. “After she passed away, my sister who had been taking care of her gave it to me, and it was in such bad shape I wasn’t really sure what to do with it,” Cooper recalled.
“I had it in the back of my truck and people kept asking me, ‘Why do you have a deer in your truck?,’ and I realized it was a great conversation piece,” he said.
Cooper used to work in the jewelry business, so he opted to paint it bright gold. Goldie first took up residence on his front porch, until he decided to move her out near McKenzie Road for better visibility.
To have a little fun with the move, Cooper moved the deer 5 or 6 feet closer to the road every night, “to make it appear like she was walking to her final destination,” he said. “I think it probably took me a week to be able to get it there.”
Moving Goldie is no easy task, given she weighs 133 pounds. A co-worker of Cooper’s gifted him with a dolly to make the job easier, and also helped him come up with the name Goldie Fawn.
Dressing up the deer in costumes wasn’t initially Cooper’s idea. “I went out there one day and somebody had decorated her for me. It was wearing a cheerleading shirt and sunglasses with a bow on its head,” he recalled.
Cooper has his suspicions about who first decorated Goldie, “but nobody ever owned up to it,” he said.
The prank kickstarted Cooper’s mission to continue dressing up the deer himself. Every few weeks or so, Goldie appears in a new outfit or with a new theme. The deer is typically decked out for major holidays or significant events.
During last year’s torrential rains, which flooded local farmland, Goldie simply sported a life jacket. “I had a lot of positive feedback on that. People loved it,” Cooper.
It’s times like those when the whimsical deer can put a lighthearted spin on an otherwise negative topic, like the coronavirus, he said. He hasn’t had any negative feedback about Goldie sporting a surgical mask and Corona can.
“I’ve had absolutely no negative reaction to that whatsoever,” said Cooper, who isn’t one to shy away from controversy. During the 2018 state senate campaign, he posted red and blue signs by the deer poking fun at what he viewed as inherently negative campaigns being run by both candidates.
“I don’t shy away from being a bit controversial. Most of (Goldie’s themes are) done just to have fun and enjoy life, because we take it so seriously,” Cooper said.
Some of his favorite versions of Goldie were when she appeared as an Easter bunny with spray-painted eggs at her feet, or on New Year’s Day, when she appeared with empty beer cans and a toilet nearby.
“The wind chill that day was 20 or 30 below zero, and I was out there at 6 in the morning putting this out. I wanted to make it look like she’d partied a little too much the night before,” Cooper recalled.
Another favorite was around the time of the much-hyped royal wedding in 2018, when Goldie appeared in a white dress alongside a concrete goose in a suit.
“I went to Goodwill and kept looking until I found a dress that would work. I had to cut it in certain places to make it fit just right,” said Cooper, who found a second-hand child’s suit for the goose.
Local shops like Goodwill and the Hope House Thrift Store are his main go-tos when it comes to deer accessories and apparel. “Sometimes it cost me $5 or $10, while the toilet display cost me closer to $50,” Cooper recalled.
It’s all worth it to make people smile, he said.
“I’m kind of proud of the fact that people who enjoy it stop and tell me how much joy it brings them. There are people who stop me who I don’t even know who stop to talk about it,” he said.
Cooper is open to requests, and asks those who stop to chat if they have any suggestions for future Goldie Fawn get-ups.
Someone once left cans of white and black spray paint on his porch along with a hand-written note. “The note said the deer ought to be checkered for the Indy 500, and it looked like it was written by a kid. At the bottom it said, ‘You’ve got until May 2 to get this done or we’ll take the deer ransom,’” recalled a bemused Cooper, who happily obliged.
One particular display had some neighbors stumped, when Goldie appeared to float upside down last year on April 1.
Coming up with a structure that could suspend a 130-pound statue in the air was no easy task, said Cooper, but he was up for the challenge. He got the idea from a teenage girl he worked with on a church mission trip.
“She told me she had a dream that on April Fool’s Day the deer was upside down, so I decided on April Fool’s Day I would make her dream come true,” he said, because in the end, Goldie Fawn’s main mission is to make people smile.
