Deer romps through home but does little damage

BURRELL TOWNSHIP - Across the yard, through the pond, onto the porch and through the open door - that’s the path a young deer took to get into the house of Carl and Dena Wendel on Monday evening.

Their temporary house guest entered through their front door which was propped open at their home in the Smith Plan behind Pizza Hut along Route 22. No one was in the house at the time.

Dena was at a meeting at Blairsville High School when her husband called to tell her to come home.

“My husband was on the front porch. It ran right past my husband,” she said. “He saw it, but it wasn’t registering. It was unbelievable.”

The deer, which the Wendels believe was a yearling, trotted through the family’s kitchen, computer room and laundry room. Aside from some knocked-over water jugs, displaced dog dishes, a hole or two in the pond liner and some stray deer hairs, nothing was damaged.

“Other than making a mess, we were really lucky,” Dena said. “We have a huge 125-gallon fish tank when you first walk in the door. He ran right past that. Thank God.”

A group of neighbors came over to help figure out how to get the deer out of the house. They pounded on walls of the house to scare it into the garage, which was connected to the laundry room. Eventually, the deer made it to the garage and exited the house.

Dena estimated the deer spent about 15 minutes in her home, which is in an area the family does not consider a rural area.

“When I called my insurance agent, I’ve never seen him speechless,” Dena said. “I was talking to him and he was like, ‘Are you kidding?’”

In addition to avoiding major damage, the Wendels also avoided having a messier catastrophe on their hands - they share the house with three dogs. But Carl locked the dogs up outside the sliding glass door where they watched. The dogs were jumping on the door, wanting their own piece of the action.

“I was thinking, please don’t let them break that door,” she said. “I’ll have three dogs and a deer chasing each other around the house - I’m moving into a hotel.”