4-year-old Dominic Brown went outside to play last Tuesday and met an unlikely new friend. He and his family had been vacationing near the Shenandoah Valley when Dominic wanted to go out and play. His mom, Stephanie Brown, had been coming in and out of the house while packing up to leave. At one point, she heard little Dominic’s feet back on the porch and figured he was ready to come back inside.

What she didn’t expect to find was her toddler son on the porch with a new friend. Standing next to Dominic, who was wearing Rudolph the Reindeer pajamas, was a real life young deer. Michelle couldn’t believe her eyes. She told ABC affiliate WRIC:

“I was like ‘OK, he’s getting ready to come in.’ So I turn my head and there it is. It’s like a little baby deer and him. Like, it wasn’t anything strange for him. It was really weird.”

She took several pictures which immediately garnered a ton of attention on Facebook, being shared over 10,000 times within 24 hours. When she asked Dominic how he and the deer came to be acquainted, he simply said it was by itself at the edge of the woods, and that he told the fawn he had cereal back at the house they could share together.

She said Dominic acted as if it was completely normal to be palling around with a a deer, and even announced to his mother that the animal had a name: Flash. Stephanie said her son and the deer acted like best friends–as if they had been lifelong buddies. Unfortunately, pet deer are not really feasible where the family live up in northern Virginia, so Flash had to stay in the Shenandoah Valley when the Brown’s left.

After taking their photos and eating their cereal together, Stephanie told her son that the deer’s mother would be looking for her baby soon, and she asked Dominic to take the little deer back to the wood line. The creature followed him dutifully back to his proper home, and the two friends went their separate ways.