Deer Breaks Into Tennessee School, Gets Stuck Inside Classroom

A confused whitetail buck gave new meaning to the term "Thanksgiving break" when it broke into a Springfield, Tennessee, elementary school on the day before teachers and students left for the holiday last week.

The young buck busted through an emergency exit door at Westside Elementary School sometime after school hours on Nov. 22 and then got trapped inside. The next morning, a teacher was surprised to find a new four-legged student had shown up early for class.

Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency officer Kaleb Stratton was called to the school shortly before 7 a.m. to help lead the animal outside.

"I was expecting to see a doe or a female deer," Stratton told Southern Living. "I was not expecting such a large buck. My first thought was, 'Oh crap, how am I going to get him out of this classroom?'"

Stratton said the deer likely entered the school in a craze caused by rutting season. During rutting season, male deer are in hot pursuit of does to mate with. This buck may have seen his reflection in a door or window and confused it for another deer, causing him to break into the school.

"The deer actually pushed on the glass hard enough, that it broke the window frame out," Stratton said. "The glass itself did not break, the glass actually moved to the side as the deer went through and once the deer was through, the glass popped back in the door. The deer then could not get back out."

During his overnight stay, the buck made himself at home, overturning tables and chairs and leaving some scat behind, but no major damage was done to the school.

The buck, who the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency estimates as being between 2.5-3.5 years old, was unharmed other than a small scrape on his back.

"Once I got into the room with the deer, just him and I, he became very aggressive and started running around the classroom," Stratton said. "I'm sure he was scared. I was able to avoid him and get on the opposite side of the classroom where the emergency exit door was."

Luckily, Officer Stratton was able to lure him outside well before the school bell rang that morning.

In a post on Facebook, the agency joked that teachers would need to add a fourth "R" for rutting to the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic!