ROSEAU, Minn. — Just when it seemed as if the school year couldn’t get any weirder in a year dominated by the challenges of a pandemic, it did.
Thursday morning, on the last day of school for students in Roseau, a deer crashed through the window of the nurse’s office before scrambling out the office door and down the hallway.
Oh deer.
The deer, which broke through a window on the west side of the elementary school, slid down the hallway like it was on a sheet of ice before exiting through the north door of the Elementary School and back into the wild.
The incident was over and done in a couple of minutes, Superintendent Tom Jerome said.
“We had two staff members in (the nurse’s office) and a student in there at the time, and they were quite stunned, actually flabbergasted,” Jerome said. “There’s no warning for that. It just happens.”
The deer didn’t appear to have any major injuries, Jerome said, although a couple of staff members had a few nicks and scratches.
“Definitely a first for us,” he said. “It’s also a classic ending to this school year. Just when you thought this year couldn’t get more interesting or more challenging, or just when you think you’ve seen it all, then something like this happens today.”
A school security camera captured the incident on video, and the 35-second clip had been viewed more than 46,000 times on Facebook as of Friday morning.
The deer, which Jerome described as a “pretty good-sized doe,” left the nurse’s office at 9:57 a.m. and was out the door in less than 30 seconds, based on the security camera footage.
“It did leave without signing out, without following any protocol whatsoever,” he quipped.
Everyone in the school, from teaching staff to the school nurse and custodial crew, deserves a lot of credit not only for how they handled the deer incident, but how they met the challenges of completing the school year during a pandemic, Jerome said.
“They’ve worked so hard this year — it’s just a crazy ending of the year,” he said. “They just rolled with it and our custodial crew cleaned up the broken glass and replaced the window right away … and it was business as usual shortly afterward.”