This 80-pound doe got into the basement of a Westbrook home. Image from video courtesy of Cathy Cadigan
Catharine Cadigan and a friend were moving a bookcase into her basement in Westbrook on Tuesday night when they heard a loud crash.
“I said to him, is that you and he said no, there is something in the basement,” Cadigan said Wednesday. “I could see a little blood on the floor and a lot of animal poop. (Then) a deer poked its head around the corner and looked straight at us.
“We walked toward it, but it started to crash around and we decided to turn the lights off and shut the door,” she said.
Even more amazing is how it apparently got in: The 80-pound doe had smashed a 9-inch by 12-inch pane of glass in a ground-level cellar window and somehow squeezed its way through, dropping about 6 feet to the concrete floor.
“It’s insane,” Cadigan said.
The saga had actually begun two nights earlier, although Cadigan didn’t realize what was going on at the time.
She said she woke to the sound of a crash late Sunday night and thought it was a box of books she had moved into the basement earlier. She decided to ignore it.
But on Monday night, her two dogs would not settle down.
After finally discovering the animal on Tuesday night, Cadigan called the state for help around 10 p.m., which in turn dispatched Scott Lindsay, a wildlife biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, and Warden Steve Milton to her one-story home on Nasson Avenue.
Lindsay used a dart to sedate the animal before he and Milton loaded it onto a tarp, carried it up the stairs and through Cadigan’s living room to his truck.
Lindsay drove the deer to a nearby farm – he had asked the owner, whom he knows, for permission – and placed it on a blanket to keep it warm until it woke up.
But how the deer entered the basement left them and Cadigan scratching their heads.
Lindsay said the doe is about 2 years old and appeared to be in good health, but he’s still not sure why it entered the basement. Lindsay thought it might have been chased by a dog or coyote before squeezing through the tiny basement window.
“It’s kind of a strange thing,” Lindsay said.
Milton said he’s responded to reports of wild animals stranded in barns, sheds and homes, but never one in an enclosed basement with no way out.
“I’ve never seen this before,” he said. “The only way in was through a basement window, and it was a ground level window.” Milton said he found deer tracks leading to the broken window.
When Lindsay returned to the farm Wednesday morning to check on the deer, it was standing about 100 yards away. It stared at him for a few moments before turning and entering a wooded area off Stroudwater Street.
“It bounded away and that’s all I needed to see,” he said. “It was doing well and it’s in an excellent habitat.”
Cadigan said Lindsay and Milton deserve praise for being so kind and professional to the creature, which did not appear to have suffered any injuries from the broken glass or the 6-foot fall.
“They were amazing. They were both so calm and so gentle with the deer,” she said.
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