Unbelievable Deer Story

I got this in a e-mail from Pro-Staffer Reef Runner, You won’t belive it

Service call of the month from a Baltimore
Gas & Electricresidential customer:

BGE received a call from a customer saying:
“My power is out. When you come to fix it
be sure to bring a truck with a tall enough
bucket to remove the deer”.

The customer service rep prudently trying to
gather helpful information to help diagnose
the problem asked, “What deer”?

The customer replied ” There is a deer on top
of one of the electric poles on Wilkes Rd
about 1/2 mile west of perimeter Rd”.

The customer service rep tried desperately
to pull herself together and not laugh in front
of the customer and replied” We will dispatch
someone right away to investigate the power outage.
Thank you for the call”.

Upon completion of the call, the customer service
rep proceeded to share the funny story with her
coworkers in the office and they all had a good laugh.
Well, low and behold, the serviceman who repaired
the problem stopped by the customer service office
the following day with these pictures.

Sure enough, the deer had been hit by a train
& landed on top of a distribution feeder pole!
Unbelievable!!!!!

Origins: This is yet another case where someone’s humorous commentary has been slapped on top of photographs from another source, but in this case the text isn’t too far off the mark. The original caption accompanying these pictures correctly reflects the fact that these photographs were taken around Winnipeg, not Baltimore:

This happened just outside of Winnepeg. Ft. Gary had a call this morning (Saturday) that there was a deer on a pole . . . right! Sure enough there was. This is right beside the tracks a few miles west of Headingly Station. They figure that a train hit it and launched it up there.
These photographs are “real” in the sense that they are indeed pictures taken in early January 2003 of a deer found atop a 25-foot-high communications pole in Headingley, a town just northwest of (and formerly a part of) Winnipeg, Manitoba. Plenty of people in the area saw the deer atop the pole (including the Manitoba Hydro workers who eventually removed it), and the story was covered by local CBC radio and TV outlets.

The issue of whether the deer was really launched atop the pole when it was struck by a train is less certain. The Canadian National Railways (CNR) maintained they received no report from any of their engineers about a train’s hitting a deer in the Headingley area, and whether a deer’s torso could have been struck with enough force to launch it 25 feet up in the air yet remain mostly undamaged (save for missing portions of its back legs) has been the subject of much debate. (The general consensus is that the feat is rather improbable but technically possible.) Others have speculated that the deer was indeed hit and killed by a passing train, but it was then somehow deliberately set atop the pole by local pranksters.

Origins: This is yet another case where someone’s humorous commentary has been slapped on top of photographs from another source, but in this case the text isn’t too far off the mark. The original caption accompanying these pictures correctly reflects the fact that these photographs were taken around Winnipeg, not Baltimore:

This happened just outside of Winnepeg. Ft. Gary had a call this morning (Saturday) that there was a deer on a pole . . . right! Sure enough there was. This is right beside the tracks a few miles west of Headingly Station. They figure that a train hit it and launched it up there.
These photographs are “real” in the sense that they are indeed pictures taken in early January 2003 of a deer found atop a 25-foot-high communications pole in Headingley, a town just northwest of (and formerly a part of) Winnipeg, Manitoba. Plenty of people in the area saw the deer atop the pole (including the Manitoba Hydro workers who eventually removed it), and the story was covered by local CBC radio and TV outlets.

The issue of whether the deer was really launched atop the pole when it was struck by a train is less certain. The Canadian National Railways (CNR) maintained they received no report from any of their engineers about a train’s hitting a deer in the Headingley area, and whether a deer’s torso could have been struck with enough force to launch it 25 feet up in the air yet remain mostly undamaged (save for missing portions of its back legs) has been the subject of much debate. (The general consensus is that the feat is rather improbable but technically possible.) Others have speculated that the deer was indeed hit and killed by a passing train, but it was then somehow deliberately set atop the pole by local pranksters.