In the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 1, a deer crashed through a main-floor window of Mohn Hall. This unexpected incident left the campus community wondering how the situation was dealt with and what may have caused the deer to act so unusually.
According to Director of Public Safety Jeffery Favreau, the room that the deer crashed into was on the first floor, and happened to be a show room that is used by St. Olaf to show prospective students the layout of a typical dorm. The deer “jumped through the window and smashed around inside the room before jumping back out the window,” Favreau said in an interview with The Olaf Messenger.
There appeared to be considerable damage to the room after the incident. Nearby facilities staff witnessed the deer going into and out of the window and called Public Safety; then, facilities were able to begin cleaning the mess of broken glass and blood left behind in the room. Favreau confirmed that the deer was unfortunately injured upon entering the room and could not be located after exiting. However, “Public Safety staff were able to track the deer through the woods, and its trail went off campus,” Favreau said.
While it is unknown what the exact reason behind the deer’s atypical behavior is, Favreau suggested a couple of factors which could have potentially played a role in the incident. Firstly, the time of the incident was approximately 1 p.m.. The first Wednesday of each month is when statewide tornado siren testing occurs, and those sirens typically go off at that time.
“The testing siren may have spooked it,” Favreau said.
Another theory involves a more biological approach. Deer are currently in their annual mating season, which can often cause them to be “more aggressive, especially toward other deer or reflections of deer,” Favreau said. It is possible that this deer saw its own reflection in the window of the first floor room and charged towards it, ultimately crashing through it and into the room.
“I have only been with the College for a few months, but this was my first incident of a deer entering a dorm in all the institutions I have worked at. I’m not sure if we have had similar incidents in the past,” Favreau said.
This incident appears to be an outlier for our local Northfield deer.
