Early on the morning of Sunday, Oct. 4, residents of Boer Bennink (BB) woke up to a deer in the community kitchen (CK).
“I was just starting to get ready for church with my roommate, and then we heard a loud crashing noise. We thought it was in our CK,” Hannah-Grace Wildschut, resident of 2nd BB, said.
Wildschut and her roommate went to investigate, but found nothing. Heading downstairs, they found the first-floor CK window fully shattered and a chair blocking the door. “At first I thought it was that someone had blocked off the door so no one could get in because the window was broken, but then, as I’m walking down the hallway, I just saw the whole deer just standing in there,” Wildschut told Chimes.
“Every time you would walk past the windows of the CK, he’d start running around, but he had at least one broken leg, so he had to limp around,” Wildschut said. Campus Safety was called, and the deer eventually laid down.
Upon arrival, Campus Safety tried many methods to get the deer out, including trying to guide it back out the window with a ramp, trying to carry it or guide it walking through the hallway out of the building, according to Wildschut. When those methods failed, “They tranquilized the deer in the kitchen, and I think they wrapped him up in a big blanket and carried him down the hallway,” said Wildschut.
“The deer could not be coaxed out of the room, and animal control would not respond. Campus Safety Sergeant Mike Dunn and I responded from home,” Tyson Moore, Campus Safety assistant director, told Chimes. “We were able to safely corral the deer, euthanize it, and dispose of it.”
“Some people are saying that they killed the deer in the CK, but that’s not true. They did not shoot it in the kitchen, as far as I know,” Wildschut told Chimes. “That would be a little intense. No murder was committed in the kitchen.”
Due to the impacts of the deer and its injuries, much of the carpet had to be ripped up and replaced with linoleum, according to Wildshut. “Facilities staff worked most of the day for the extensive cleanup efforts required after the animal was removed,” Moore said.
According to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) reports, around 2 million deer live in Michigan, with Kent County having one of the densest populations in the state. This dense population creates deer population management issues and can lead to human and deer interactions such as this.
Though the deer did not survive, he does live on within the BB community. Residents named him “BJ in the CK. It’s short for Benny Jr. because our boar’s name is Benny,” Wildshut said. “He’s a part of our dorm community now.”
