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Buck enters city bank for doe? |
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Wednesday, 25 February 2009 |
By KAREN CAMPBELL
Assistant Managing Editor
A spooked deer that found its way into a downtown Wapakoneta bank spent nearly 25 minutes wreaking havoc inside before leaving the same way he came — a large window he busted out.
Starting like the punchline to a joke, Wapakoneta Police Lt. Greg Lowry said, “A buck walked into a bank looking for some ‘doe.’ ”
But for him and others at the downtown Fifth Third Bank, 10 W. Auglaize St., at 3:10 p.m. Monday, it wasn’t a laughing matter until after the deer left and it became an almost far-fetched story to tell.
“It was quite odd. I was upstairs on the main floor and heard a loud noise of glass breaking and then it moving around,” said Bethany Garrett, the bank’s customer service manager.
“I didn’t know what it was,” she said. “You can imagine (working at a bank) what was going through my head thinking about what the noise could be from. I never thought it could be a deer.”
She said luckily no one was in the basement of the building, which houses a conference room and break room, as well as bathrooms. They have been using the basement now mainly for storage.
If the deer had entered the building a few feet in one direction, Garrett said it could have made entry where customers are and the deer would have found itself in the bank lobby.
Garrett said for a while after the deer crashed through the window, the estimated 200-pound anterless buck couldn’t be heard and bank employees and customers upstairs didn’t know what to think until Garrett watched it jump out the window, leap over the concrete wall and onto the frozen Auglaize River.
“The deer came out by himself and went back across the river through town,” Garrett said.
A customer told her he saw it run across the river to get to the bank and hit the reflective glass with its head several times before breaking the glass and getting inside.
“Bucks turn aggressive with other bucks,” Lowry said. “We think he saw his reflection in the window and thought it was another buck.”
The deer, which didn’t appear to be too injured, was bleeding from his muzzle and left a small trail of blood where it went, as well as smears on the wall from where it tried to escape.
“I imagine he was kind of distraught,” Garrett said.
Officers with the Wapakoneta Police Department pulled glass from where the deer originally entered the building to allow him more room to leave.
They stood by inside until he left. They were armed with tasers they didn’t use, which they decided would have stunned the deer for five-second intervals. They didn’t interfere more than to make sure everyone was safe and to limit the amount of harm done.
The game warden was called, but he could not make it to the scene before the deer left.
“We could hear him thrashing around, tearing stuff up, banging into things, trying to climb the walls of the vault,” Lowry said of the buck.
He said the deer first ended up on top of a conference table, where he left scratch marks with his hooves, then went into the vault and into another area before he tried the vault again. When he finally spied the window, where he thought he could escape, he ran hard, jumped and missed, hitting a nearby wall before getting up and heading out the window.
After jumping onto the frozen Auglaize River, the deer was last seen heading out of town north on Van Buren Street.
A cleaning crew was able to repair the damage.
Lowry said every once in a while a deer will come into town and sometimes make its way through a window into a home or garage, but typically goes in and right back out. This case was a little different.
“He was definitely spooked,” Lowry said. “You never know. This time of year, we were fortunate he didn’t have a rack of antlers or he really could have torn some stuff up.”
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 26 February 2009 )
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