HENNING, Minn. - An Otter Tail County homeowner has quite the home invasion story to tell her grandkids. Thanks to her iPad, she has the proof.
It wasn't a burglar that made its way through her house.
It was a deer. Now, the four-legged doe has become a nosy neighbor who shows up out of nowhere.
One recent morning, Sharon Sly-Durante got up to make morning tea.
"And I could feel someone was watching me and I looked out and the deer was looking right at me in the window, and I talked to it like it was a baby," Sly-Durante says.
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Suddenly, the young doe made her way into the house.
"I have a deer in my house," she says.
It was making herself right at home.
"It did not freak out. It was curious about everything," Sly-Durante says.
From the kitchen, to the dining room to the living room it went, smelling, tasting.
"There is a deer in my house. What am I doing? There is a deer in my house," Sly-Durante says.
It was a curious little thing, she adds.
"She went up to the grandfather clock and put her nose on the glass and watched the pendulum go back and forth," Sly-Durante says.
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Sly-Durante lives outside Henning. A quaint, quiet place in the woods. Perfect for her and her new friend.
"It was the most exciting thing," she says, "I said, 'Thank you Lord. You gave me a wonderful week to think about a deer coming in my house.' So exciting."
Sharon has become a bit of a deer whisperer. Her four-legged friend comes out of the woods frequently. It even showed up when a contracting crew was on site.
As we left Sharon, we turned our car around near the woods, and sure enough there was her deer. Curious, not bashful at all. Our photographer almost had to shoo her away. As we left, the doe wandered off. Our little nature lesson for the day over.
Nobody has been feeding the deer and there are no game farms nearby. The irony of it all is that there is a rifle range just down the road.
