By Carol Vaughn
An apparent break-in at a Painter business turned out to be the deed of a furry intruder.
Jeff Kelley went to his business, Shore Saw & Mower on Route 13, Sunday morning, Dec. 22, to feed his pet bearded dragon and use the computer.
When he arrived, he found a chaotic scene inside, including lots of broken glass and blood and a broken sign.
Fearing the business — which sells and repairs small engines, lawnmowers, chainsaws, and other handheld power equipment — had been the scene of a crime, Kelley called his wife and asked her to come take photographs.
They also alerted the Accomack County Sheriff’s Office. Rita Kelley arrived first.
“There was glass everywhere,” she said.
By the time she got there, Jeff Kelley had found another piece of evidence — tufts of deer hair amid the wreckage — which revealed the true story.
Apparently a deer, spooked by who-knows-what in the night, had attempted to leap into the building through a thick, double-paned window — and was stopped only by the security bars on the window. They also found a single hoofprint near the window —“his launch position,” Rita Kelley called it.
There was no sign of the animal itself.
She has two theories about the incident, which happened three days before Christmas.
Either Santa Claus needed a chainsaw to leave for some Eastern Shoreman — and sent Rudolph to Shore Saw to fetch one — or a deer wanted revenge on the Shore’s many hunters, and needed a chainsaw to cut down “all these…deer stands,” Kelley said.
According to the trail it left, the unfortunate deer after its encounter with the Shore Saw window apparently headed in the direction of a nearby veterinary office, according to Kelley.
