When coming home from a shopping trip, a couple was horrified to find their home in shambles – had they been the victims of a robbery? Upon further investigation, they quickly learned that it actually wasn’t a robber at all but a deer who broke into their house for an afternoon adventure.
Ray and Katie O’Donnell of New Brunswick, Canada, stepped into their home Wednesday after a day of shopping and assumed police would soon declare it a crime scene. Their belongings were slung in every direction, the living room window was shattered, and a large pool of blood coated the floor.
“As we were going into our house, my wife noticed the window was broken, so we thought someone had broken in,” Ray told Global News.
Surveying the damage, the couple prepared to contact the police. As they ventured down to the basement to check the last area of the house, however, they found the culprit: a female deer. The confused female gazed at them from near a closed window, unsure how to escape the unfamiliar environment.
“I went down to the basement to check to see what was missing,” Ray explained. “And as I looked into my family room, there was a deer looking at me.”
The couple, of course, felt relieved to have found a deer in their house rather than a dangerous criminal. Seeing a stranded deer in their home, however, was not on their Wednesday afternoon bingo card. “I was very surprised,” Ray said. “Quite surprised. I didn’t expect it at all.”
Wildlife Officials Help Couple Remove Deer From Their House
Despite its obvious confusion, the deer was surprisingly calm, even at the sight of two approaching humans. “It was actually just standing there staring at me,” Ray said. “Probably wondering what I was.”
Rather than dialing the police, the couple called the province’s forestry department for help. Wildlife officials soon arrived at their house to wrangle the wandering deer.
It took “a bit of a fight,” but wildlife officials and family members worked together to successfully direct the deer out of the house and back out into the nearby forest, capturing the entire bizarre rescue on video.
According to the O’Donnells, the deer broke into their house through the window of Katie’s sewing room. “It came through a double window and ended up in my sewing room. It had material everywhere, doors off the cabinet, and the door going into the sewing room,” Katie said. “So it was quite a mess and quite a shock.”
Deer are quite common near their house, the couple said. They can’t even plant flowers in their garden because the local deer will eat them the moment they’re finished growing. However, they never expected one to venture inside their home.
The deer caused nearly $1,000 in damage to their house, but the O’Donnells say they already look back at the incident and laugh.