Rescue crews battled to reach a young deer stranded in a canal in East London during the night.

It took three hours for the London Fire Brigade’s rescue dinghy squad to finally catch the fawn which kept dodging them as it swam up and down the Limehouse Cut, evading all attempts at rescue.

Three crews were involved from Millwall, Poplar and East Ham fire stations.

“The poor animal was distressed and kept swimming to and fro,” Brigade watch manager Neil Dickinson told the East London Advertiser.

“It kept swimming away as we got close, then turning and heading the opposite way - we had to keep switching just to keep up.”

They finally caught the animal at midnight when fire-fighter Mark Petters managed to pull it to the towpath with a rescue blanket and haul it out.

It was handed over, shivering but safe, to an RSPCA team at the Burdett Road bridge towpath at Limehouse and taken away to be cared for.

No-one knows how the Muntjac deer got stranded in the canal or where it came from. Rescuers think it might have wandered down the Lea Valley along the riverbank that feeds into the canal.