Ok, here I am again reaching out to the three or four of y’all that might read this column with a few thoughts this week. I always try to tie this column back into sports and it usually works, at least on my end anyway. It is not very hard really because my life has pretty much always been about sports in some form or fashion.
I really have no idea how a story about thieving raccoons can turn into a tidbit on how to turn a double play or how a deer jumping through a plate glass window has anything to do with a three-point shot at the buzzer in a state semifinal game, but somehow it does or will in the future.
For instance, back in the day when I was a police officer in a certain Metro area city, I received a call about a deer in the kitchen of someone’s home. Needless to say, I was all over that one. When I arrived at the address in question, the man of the house was standing in the yard covered in blood and holding a butcher knife.
You see, I had been trained to consider a fellow with a butcher knife a threat, especially with blood all over his white t-shirt. Forgetting about the deer in the kitchen for a moment, I started assuming that maybe the call came out wrong because this looked like it could potentially be a full-out domestic situation for the ages.
This dude was standing there distraught and bloody, clutching a butcher knife with the look of hopelessness in his eyes led me to believe this situation was far more dire than we originally thought. After a few verbal commands from behind my Glock Model 22 .40 caliber firearm, the fellow in question gladly dropped the knife and without pause stated, “If you use that inside, try not to shoot a hole in my cabinets.”
He then said, “It’s crazy and it is running all around my house.” My mind immediately went back to the original call and what “it” was and I proceeded cautiously into the residence. The gentleman gladly stayed outside as another officer arrived to assist me in apprehending or corralling the “suspect.”
Judging from the blood on the homeowner’s shirt, I assumed he had stabbed the creature and merely wanted us to finish it off…boy, was I wrong!!! The blood was actually from the complainant, and at this point it was Deer 1, Homeowner Dude 0. He had actually tried to catch the deer with his bare hands and it gave him a ride from the kitchen and down the hall before depositing him face-first into a bedroom door that he had so thoughtfully closed before attempting his in-home rodeo.
As we entered the home we asked if anyone else was inside and he said that his wife had just taken their son to his baseball game at a neighborhood park and he was about to leave himself when he heard the suspect break into his home through a large bay window in his kitchen. After seeing that it was actually a deer that came crashing through, it was at that moment he took his ill-fated ride.
I suppose he decided to stab the deer with the butcher knife because we never really asked him what he intended to do with it. I kind of wish I would have asked, but I digress. My assisting officer and I located the back door of the home and opened it and seconds later ole Bambi bolted out screaming, “FREEEEEEEDOM!!!!”
Not really, but you get my point. It jumped the jungle gym and sand box,, kicked a big yellow Tonka truck and disappeared into the neighborhood to parts unknown. Shortly after washing the blood off his face and thanking us for the heroes we were at the moment, the homeowner put on his coaching shirt and left for the park.
