Stray deer crashes school cafeteria during breakfastBy Tom Smith, Senior Staff Writer, Timesdaily.comPublished: Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 3:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 10:57 p.m.RUSSELLVILLE - Students at West Elementary School got a surprise guest for breakfast Wednesday morning.
"Instead of guess who's coming for dinner, it was guess who was coming for breakfast," Principal Romona Robinson joked.
Between 7:30-8 a.m. Wednesday, while several students were in the cafeteria eating breakfast, a female deer crashed through a floor-to-ceiling plate glass window.
"I had just walked out of the cafeteria and all of a sudden, one of the teachers hollered at me that the deer was in the cafeteria," Robinson said. "I ran back to the cafeteria, and sure enough, there it was, a small doe."
Robinson said lunchroom workers and teachers used tables to corral the doe and keep it from running around in the cafeteria.
"The deer only got into the room a few feet before we were able to get her somewhat contained," Robinson said. "I grabbed two brooms and used them to guide her back outside before she could run loose through the cafeteria."
The commotion didn't stop the children from eating breakfast, Robinson said.
"Our largest group (of students) had already been fed, but there was still a small group there. The kids saw it come through the window but they didn't let it interrupt their breakfast; they just turned around and watched," she said.
Robinson said the deer came over the hill from a small wooded area behind the school and just "plowed right into the back glass window."
"We have safety glass up, but that deer came right through," she said.
The crash injured the deer, and Robinson said one of her teachers called her husband to come and get it and take it to his farm.
Robinson said she was proud of the way the teachers and cafeteria personnel reacted to the situation.
"There wasn't time to panic; the first thing they thought of was the safety of the kids and they did what they needed to do to make sure the kids were OK and taken care of," she said.
Robinson said once they got the deer back outside and everything calmed down, the real work began - cleaning up the mess.
"We did a lot of deep cleaning. We could smell Clorox all day long," she said. "We Cloroxed everything - tables, walls, floors, sidewalks - you name it, we Cloroxed it."
She said the unexpected breakfast guest was the talk of the school all day.
"I had someone ask me how I knew what to do, but I had the same thing happen to me at my house five years ago this month," Robinson said. "But we kept right on going. This is a good group of folks we have here; nothing phases us.
"It was just a typical wild day at an elementary school."
Tom Smith can be reached at 740-5757 or tom.smith@TimesDaily.com.http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20091119/ARTICLES/911195035/1011/NEWS?Title=Stray-deer-crashes-school-cafeteria-during-breakfast
