Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 8, 1994 TAG: 9406080097
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER NOTE: lead
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But crashing through the front door of a house? Never.
The Smiths - who had called the two men to help them in the aftermath - were perplexed about the bizarre visitor to their Wycliffe Avenue Southwest home early Tuesday.
Babs Smith was in the kitchen with Donny, her 11-year-old son. Carlie, her 9-year-old daughter, was in the den, talking on the telephone with her father, who was at work.
About 8:05 a.m., Smith said she heard a "huge crash."
"It sounded like an airplane crashed into the house," she recounted. "I looked in the dining room and I saw glass all over the floor. Then my daughter said, 'There's a deer in the house.'"
Smith didn't quibble. She grabbed her children and sought shelter in a downstairs bathroom. Once inside, she said, she heard the doe thrashing about her home.
It tried to get through a kitchen window, but was unable to. It attempted to jump through the den's bay window, but to no avail. In the end, the doe retreated, apparently the same way it entered, leaving a trail of blood in each room.
Throughout the 10-minute ordeal there wasn't even time to alert Don Smith, who was hanging on the other end of his daughter's telephone call, not quite sure what to make of all the commotion.
"I thought [Carlie] had said there was a bee in the house," he said. "But I heard all this crashing and thought it was a swarm of bees. Then I figured it out, ran to my car and zoomed on home."
By the time he got there, he found glass all over the house and his family locked in the bathroom. The doe was nowhere to be found.
Deer sightings are rare in the southwest part of the city, according to Roanoke police, who say they still are looking for the doe. But with the dry weather and the heat, the animal might have been in search of water, they said.
"I've lived here for 12 years and I've never seen a deer in the neighborhood," said Suzi Turner, who lives across the street from the Smiths. "The closest thing I've seen is a groundhog. Frankly, I thank God no one got hurt. It's a scary thing."
Tuesday afternoon, Stan Kummer, Babs Smith's father, was helping to sweep up the mess.
"You probably thought it was D-Day plus one," he remarked to his daughter, broom in hand.
"It'll make good cocktail talk for a while and the kids will have some fat to chew at school," he added.
Babs Smith said her son already tried his hand at the story. He explained to a teacher that he left his homework in his kitchen because a deer was in his home.
To that, Smith said the teacher replied, "'Right, and I've got an elephant in mine.'"
by CNB