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Home invader comes as shock

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By NEIL JOHNSON

Njohnson@tampatrib.com

Published: November 9, 2009

TAMPA - Pinellas sheriff's deputies George Moffett and David Littlejohn were familiar with calls of a burglary in progress, a tense situation even without the broken window or blood trail they found Saturday afternoon.

Their apprehension rose as they entered the house and heard banging from a rear bedroom. They weren't alone.

As they approached the room from a hallway, a figure burst out in a heart-stopping instant.

It wasn't armed. It wasn't even human. The flash of hoof and muscle told them they had run across a deer invasion in progress.

The deputies retreated and opened the garage door. They opened other doors. They found some towels and used them, much as matadors use capes, to flush the panicked deer outside, where it bounded into the woods of the expansive Brooker Creek Preserve.

The deer had a small cut on a back leg but did not appear to be hampered, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office said.

The call to authorities came about 1 a.m. Sunday from a neighbor who noticed a curtain blowing from a broken window in the East Lake area, the sheriff's office said.

The deputies may have been surprised but Gary Morse, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, wasn't when he heard of the incident.

"It's not all that uncommon," he said. "Deer have a tendency to go through glass. Sometimes they see their reflection and think it's another deer."

The deputies estimated the deer weighed 190 pounds, which would be large for Florida, where most deer are about 100 pounds.

"They do get that big," Morse said.

The homeowners were out of town so the sheriff's office did not provide an address of the house.

Neighbors, meanwhile boarded the window.

Reporter Neil Johnson can be reached at (813) 259-7731.

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