Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 17, 1993                   TAG: 9311170020
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DEER KEEPS LOSING ITS FOOL HEAD

I pray for the day when I can honestly report to you that all bronze deer heads are safely home with the people who cherish and deserve them.

That day is not yet here.

Ray Fisher bought his bronze deer head three or four years ago from a traveling merchant who was liquidating her stock. It's the kind of item you'd find in a Middle Eastern bazaar with the Persian rugs, water pipes and camelhide hassocks.

Fisher put it on an end table just inside the door of the Bear Trap Inn, his family's restaurant on Brambleton Avenue.

A 10-pointer, standing 3 feet tall from neck to antler, the head was a nifty gewgaw and, in a pinch, hatrack.

It soon was coveted by desperadoes.

"I thought of bolting it down," says Fisher ruefully. "But I thought that would ruin its value."

In the deer-head game, you get no second chances.

Fisher soon was relieved of his bronze deer head but - and this is rare - he tracked it down. A friend saw it in the thief's house, and he ratted.

Abductors left it at Fisher's back door the next day.

The bronze deer head was stolen a second time. Fisher dogged suspects, he interviewed disgruntled former employees and their girlfriends' parents' grocers. He tirelessly sought his bronze deer head like a grieving father might pursue his daughter to the seediest alleys of a big city.

Four or five months after the second abduction, he recovered the burnished head and repositioned it on the end table at the Bear Trap Inn entrance.

There, alas, the head sat like a brassy bait, waiting for some late-night bar patron to spirit it away through the labyrinthine hallways that lead out of the eatery.

Two weeks ago, for the third time, Ray Fisher's bronze deer head disappeared.

The Maltese falcon wasn't as well-traveled as the Fisher bronze deer head.

Fisher has interviewed some suspects, but he is a busy man, and it takes time to properly investigate a bronze deer head kidnapping.

It's just another bronze deer head abduction for authorities. Grizzled detectives, jaded by the years, have seen too many already.

Decency is on the decline.