Doug Clark: Greenacres retiree faced down deer in her bedroom

The Animal Kingdom, I’m becoming more and more convinced, is out to get us.

Maybe it’s because of all the cheeseburgers and chicken wings we’ve eaten. Who knows?

But while we humans worry about crimes like identity theft, crack houses and Donald Trump’s hair, the critters of the skies and fields are slyly and slowly trying to take over.

I’ve tried my best to inflame everyone about the dangers of toilet rats, gangs of obnoxious yard turkeys and marmots who set up residences inside Toyota engine compartments.

And have any of you called your congresspersons or taken actions to protect yourselves?

Absolutely NOT!

Well, perhaps you will all finally wake up and grab a shotgun after I tell you about Necia Wright’s four-legged home invasion.

“I thought the house was falling in,” says Wright of the “horrible crash” that startled her last Friday morning, a few minutes after she had stepped out of the shower.

Wright is 78 years old. She lives in a cottage at Spokane Valley Good Samaritan Village, a retirement community in Greenacres.

Wright comes from hearty stock, being the daughter of a Silver Valley miner.

Good thing. I would have started screaming and wet myself had I faced what this woman faced.

Wright, who was standing in her bedroom, looked down the hallway to see a full-grown deer CHARGING STRAIGHT AT HER!!!

Wright would learn later that two women on a walk had inadvertently startled the deer who jumped straight through her living room window.

“The deer was in a panic mode,” said Wright. “I’m thanking God that I wasn’t run over.”

It was all Wright could do to move out of the intruder’s way. Even so, one of the deer’s hooves clipped her right leg, leaving a rather angry three-inch scrape.

The deer, oddly enough, appeared unharmed despite its header through the window.

“Didn’t see any blood from the deer,” she added, “just from the scrape on my leg.”

Wright found herself in bizarre face-off.

The deer (a female, no doubt, from its lack of antlers) stood on one side of the bed. Wright held her ground on the other side.

“We looked eye-to-eye,” she said. “It was a big deer,” she said, adding that the animal “gets bigger every time I tell the story.”

A predicament like this speaks volumes about the character of a person.

Did Wright wimper? Did she cower in fear?

Hell, no.

The woman hollered, “Get out of my house, you crazy deer!”

The beast, perhaps sensing Wright’s indignant tone, turned “and ran down the hall.”

About this time Wright heard someone at her front door. She opened it to find the women who had spooked the deer.

Wright didn’t know that, of course. She slammed the door, telling them she was in the midst of a wildlife emergency and couldn’t chat right now.

Wright heard another expensive-sounding crash. The deer had decided to vamoose, but by jumping through another perfectly intact window.

All in all the damages were incidental, said Wright.

A zillion pieces of scattered glass thanks to two broken windows. A small coffee table thoroughly flattened upon impact. A few gouges in a Naugahyde chair. A couple of rips in a curtain.

Oh, and she found a piece of deer hair on her dining room table along with some dried slobber marks here and there.

Yep. Things could have been a whole lot worse.

“I’m so glad I had time to get dressed before everybody got here,” explained Wright. “Pretty soon I had a houseful of people.”

A paramedic, summoned by the maintenance man’s call for help, bandaged Wright’s leg.

“People just don’t hardly believe me, but I’ve got two windows boarded up,” she said, adding that in the aftermath it was decided that the “perfect thing” would be to call me.

That’s what I would’ve done. “It’s a story that should be told,” she added.

It certainly is.

Wright has decided to not track the animal down and press charges for assault, vandalism and possible exposure to fleas.

That’s wise. There’s no reason to get the law involved.

Besides, the way our justice system works, Wright would probably wind up in jail for not providing her trespasser with a trans-species bathroom.

Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com.