Early in the morning, around 3 a.m. John and Gerry Laakso awoke to glass breaking and loud banging noises. Their house was being vandalized. “I heard this awful crash and banging in the house,” Gerry said. Her husband added that they were petrified. The noise died down and John bravely confronted the vandals in his home. He opened his bedroom door and turned on the kitchen light. To John’s surprise, the noise was not burglars, but a young deer standing near his kitchen. John was about 30 feet from the doe. “I stood there watching. She looked at me and I looked at her.” “I was so relieved to see it was a deer,” Gerry said. “I couldn’t imagine why vandals would choose our house.” Even with the relief of knowing a deer was in their home, the Laaksos weren’t calm. “What do you do with a deer in your house?” John asked. “Do you stay in your room and lock the door, do you call 9-1-1?” Gerry decided to call their daughter, whose home is up the driveway. “I was shaking so much, I couldn’t dial her number,” Gerry recalled. “And they are on memory, [number] one.” To the couple’s relief, the deer jumped out the window, exiting through the same hole it had entered. “It was like she had springs on her feet. She just stood up and jumped out the window.” With the delinquent gone, the Laaksos surveyed the damage to their home. There was glass and some deer hair scattered throughout their kitchen and living room area. All of the furniture was intact. “She must have come in here at about 30 miles per hour,” John said. “Oh, it had to be,” added Gerry. “There was glass everywhere.” As the excitement was over, the couple decided to patch up the hole and go back to bed. John went out to the shed and nailed cardboard over the hole. The next day, they cleaned up the mess. “Some friendly neighbors came to help us sweep and wet mop the floor,” John said with a smile. Gerry was surprised that the deer didn’t do more damage. She said it entered the far window, in a panel of three. If the deer had chose another window, she may have run into the couple’s dining room set or their antique sewing machine, below the second and third panels. The event took place on a typical November evening, 2003. The Laaksos weren’t sure why the deer chose to visit their home, but think it was being chased, possibly by coyotes. “It wasn’t dogs,” Gerry said, “there was no barking.” The episode was the first time an animal had actually stepped foot inside the couple’s home, but they have been visited by other furry friends, outside. The Laakso’s house has many windows, one side of their house overlooks a pond. The couple also has bird feeders outside of their home. “Once a bear made itself at home here,” Gerry said. “We left for a week, filled the bird feeder and found out a bear had come.” The bear had torn up their bird feeder and ate its contents. “I think he slept on our lawn chairs and drank out of our fish pool.” Gerry said. After returning from their vacation, the couple noticed the “guest” and let their dogs out. “The dogs saw it and chased it away,” Gerry said. John added, “That was the end of the bear.” Being animals lovers, with a dog, bird and fish, perhaps the wild animals sense the Laaksos’ is “home.” After 23 years of residing in the dwelling, the couple hopes they won’t be visited by a deer again. “That (being visited again) is a chance in 1,000,” John said as Gerry laughed. “The odds are very low that we’d ever get attracted again. [I guess] we will take the next [visit] in stride . . . but the next could be a buck with antlers, that would be too much.”
