Deer ‘trying to free his friend’ breaks into taxidermy shop

July 21 (UPI) — A North Carolina sheriff’s deputy investigating a potential break-in at a taxidermy shop came face to face with the suspect: a deer “trying to free his friend.”

Keith and Denise Bowman, owners of Bowman’s Wildlife Taxidermy in Walnut Cove, said they received a 3 a.m. phone call Sunday from a Stokes County sheriff’s deputy.

“You have a deer in your building, you need to get over there and secure it,” Denise Bowman recalled in an interview with WGHP-TV. “I said, ‘Is this a joke?’”

“The [deputy] said, ‘There is a deer in here,’” Keith Bowman said. “I said, ‘There’s a lot of deer in here,’ and she said, ‘No, I mean a live one.’”

A video recorded by a deputy inside the store shows the deer standing in a doorway after making a mess inside the business.

“I watched this unfold. Come with me…there is a deer, he broke into the taxidermy trying to free his friend. Can’t make this up,” the deputy says in the video.

The deer escaped uninjured, but not before causing about $2,500-$3,000 worth of damage.

“Sometimes, I think, I need to write a book. It’s just amazing at the events that take place,” the couple wrote on the store’s Facebook page.