Unwanted house guest Deer moves into Conway home while couple is on vacation

Ted and Barbara Knight arrived home from their trip to Florida on Friday to find an intruder had been in the house.

An eight-point buck had crashed through a window facing the home's back yard and traipsed injured around the house before finding its way back out, Barbara said.

While sitting in the St. Louis airport Barbara Knight was informed that her home had been broken into by an eight-point buck. The woodland intruder has broken through the window behind her, wandered through her home trailing blood before finally finding its way back through the window. ANTHONY REYES PHOTO

While the couple was out of town, their granddaughter, Melanie Koone, brought in the mail at their home in Smoking Oaks subdivision. She arrived about 11 a.m. Thursday and found blood on the floor inside the front door. Thinking the house had been burglarized, Koone left and called her mother, Kathy Hall, who called the Faulkner County Sheriff's Office.

"My granddaughter said, 'Boy, they weren't very smart,'" thinking the burglar had injured himself, Barbara said.

The Knights' son, Marty, came to check the house.

Marty discovered the broken window in the living room, a large pool of blood near the fireplace and hoof prints on the carpet. As he went into the backyard, he found the deer looking at itself in a mirror that hangs on the seven-foot privacy fence, Barbara said. The deer jumped over a short fence into a neighbor's yard, then back into the Knights' yard and over the seven-foot privacy fence, she said.

Based on the hoof prints left on the wood floor in the entryway, Barbara said, Marty determined the deer came from the living room into the entryway to attempt to leave through another window. She was amazed the deer did not damage a large curio cabinet filled with porcelain dolls from Romania about 1 1/2 feet from the window. It also knocked over a lamp trying to go through another window, but did not disturb a jar of marbles sitting next to the lamp. It got out of the house the way it came in - through the window.

"Just think what he could have done," Barbara said. "He's a pretty nice house guest."

Ted remarked, "That deer could have destroyed this place, but I guess he was scared."

The window the deer crashed through has a tinted coating on it, making it reflective on the outside. Barbara said birds and other animals see their reflections on the window and attack it from time to time.

Barbara said the incident was "pretty bizarre."

"It's so frightening to me to think they're out there and they can just come into your house," she said. "I still think I can smell the deer in here, and I just want to clean and clean and clean."

There are no woods near Smoking Oaks, Barbara pointed out.

"I can't imagine how he got this far without people reporting it," she said.

Despite the glass that needed to be cleaned out of the carpet and the window that needed to be replaced, the Knights managed to find some humor in the situation.

Barbara said Melanie, who has hunted with her father since she was a small child, "called her dad and told him, 'I found us a new deer stand.'"

Melanie found a snake in the house over the summer while bringing in the mail for her grandparents.

"She said we're on our own with the mail," Barbara said with a laugh.

(Staff writer Rachel Parker may be reached by e-mail at rachel.parker@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1277.)