As students of Hamilton College know, the wildlife on campus is practically fearless when it comes to interacting with students. A resident of Babbit Hall discovered this on the afternoon of Wednesday, Jan. 29, when a deer crashed through the window of the residential suite’s single.

The resident of the room, Kyle Canelli ’20, was in the common room with his suitemate, James Southwick ’20, at the time of the incident. All of the sudden, Canelli recalls, the two friends heard a very loud crash.

After entering the single, the frightened and shocked deer continued to walk through Canelli’s room and attempted to exit the room by slamming its head against another window. However, it was unsuccessful.

According to the head of Campus Safety, Officer Francis Coots, the students responded by calling Campus Safety, who arrived at the scene as soon as possible. After confirming the safety of everyone present, the officers began to search for the deer, but their search proved unsuccessful. Campus Safety then contacted Facilities Management to clean and replace the glass.

Although Canelli was offered a room to stay in during the window repairs, he opted to sleep on a couch in the common room. Fortunately, the window only took one day to fix, and Canelli returned to his room without any concern as to whether or not the deer would attempt to enter again.

As to why it happened in the first place, Canelli believes, “it saw its reflection in the glass and for whatever reason, was not a fan.” Similarly, Officer Coots suspects “the deer was disoriented due to reflections, and then it panicked.”

Officer Coots confirmed that although this has never happened during his tenure on campus, it has occurred before. He presumes that as the mild winters have increased and the number of natural predators and big game hunters decreases, the deer population has had a much larger presence on campus.