On the morning of June 9, 94-year-old Ray Jaarsma was at his Danforth Avenue kitchen stove cooking himself some breakfast when suddenly a loud crash startled him.
“Bang!” he told the Sun last week. “I thought my stove was exploding.”
As he turned around, he heard a commotion coming from his living room and suddenly an injured deer stumbled into the kitchen.
It was badly hurt with an obviously broken front shoulder and plenty of blood emitting from its body.
“It was squirting everywhere on each of its heartbeats,” said Mr. Jaarsma. “It was almost crawling through the kitchen.”
Mr. Jaarsma had just spent about a month in hospital recuperating from a broken hip and was still using a walker to get around.
“I was only home a few days when this happened,” he said. “It was quite an ordeal.”
He looked at the deer and thought he needed to find a way to get it out of his house.
So he shooed it along with his walker all the way to the sunroom and managed to get the back patio door open — quite an accomplishment at 94 with a recently broken hip. The deer struggled its way out of the door into the back yard where it laid down, still bleeding badly.
To his surprise, before he got back out to the kitchen, there was a knock on his front door. It was the OPP, who responded to a call from a neighbour across the street, who thought maybe there had been a break-in.
His son Roger, who arrived a short time later, said that some of the neighbours on the street told him they heard the bang inside their houses.
“That’s how loud it was,” said Roger. “Thankfully, Dad wasn’t hurt, but oh, what a mess.”
A family friend who lives close by responded to Mr. Jaarsma’s call and came to start mopping up the blood and with the help of the police officers, was able to get all of the glass picked up from the broken picture window.
Roger, who lives in Kingsville, was just getting out of the shower when his wife picked up the phone.
“I heard her say, oh my God, is he okay?” says Roger. “Then she said, you need to go now.”
Upon his arrival about 45 minutes after the incident, the police had dispatched the mortally wounded deer and a friend-of-a-friend from Kingsville was able to pick it up so it wouldn’t go to waste. Roger went into action mode, documenting everything he could, while trying to help soak up the blood and glass.
“I started taking pictures immediately,” said Roger. “I felt we needed to have evidence for insurance purposes.”
They are still awaiting some insurance quotes before everything can be settled.
As for furniture, Mr. Jaarsma — who built the house himself in 1958 — lost three chairs and sustained damage to tables and drapes.
Four chairs were removed for cleaning, but only one responded well to the blood removal.
The deer had been spotted in the area three or four days prior to jumping through the Jaarsma window and had likely spent time in the nearby Carolina Woods.
As for Mr. Jaarsma, he’s none the worse for wear, taking it all in stride, but he says that’s enough excitement for one month.
“I hope I don’t see anything like that ever again,” he said.
The window that the deer jumped through, still awaiting repair some three weeks after the incident.
SUN photo by Mark Ribble
This photo of the otherwise healthy deer was taken just days before the incident just a couple doors down from the Jaarsma home.
Photo submitted
