Feb 02, 2021 (soranews24.com) - Last Friday, the Kanagawa Prefectural Police’s Matsuda Precinct received a call from Oi High School. A male intruder had been spotted in the building, roaming the halls at around 10:30 a.m.
The intruder had gained access to the building by breaking a window near the main entrance, and after being seen made his way to the second floor, where he travelled down another hall for roughly 100 meters (328 feet) before hiding in a women’s employee bathroom that was being refurbished.
Breaking into a school and then holing up in the ladies’ room might sound like the actions of a very disturbed human being, but in this case there wasn’t any malicious depravity at play, because the intruder was a deer.
As cute as they may be, though, a wild deer is still a potentially dangerous animal, and this one, weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of 65 kilograms (143 pounds) and with 60-centimeter (23.6-inch) antlers, could cause serious injury to anyone who got in its way should it panic. After the deer occupied the bathroom, school staff barricaded the entrance with planks of wood and other materials and contacted the police, who in turn enlisted the help of the local hunting association.
Luckily for the deer, culling the animal wasn’t deemed necessary. Instead, the hunting association was able to capture it alive and bind its legs, then escort it off campus and release it in the forest a little more than two hours after the report came in. “I’m happy that no students were hurt,” said Oi High School principal Naoaki Hatta, since classes were in session at the time. Showing benevolent forgiveness, Hatta did not give the deer detention for vandalism, disrupting lessons, or using the employee bathroom without permission.
