This is not something you hear every day: “The electricity has been knocked out because a deer blew out a transformer.”
If it were a raccoon, squirrel, or other small critter it would be easier to believe. But as odd as it sounds, it did happen. Just how it happened is a little strange, but here’s the possible explanation.
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 was that the feat was rather improbable but technically possible, but some people 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. Still others opined that the animal was lying atop lowered wires and then hoist in the air when those wires were pulled into place… [continued]
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