Basingstoke teen tells of deer 'attack' ordeal (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Basingstoke teen tells of deer 'attack' ordeal

6:30pm Saturday 13th October 2012 in News By Helen Morton

A BASINGSTOKE teenager was left shaken after she was head-butted by a deer which knocked her to the ground in a bizarre ‘attack.’

Paige Vanden, 13, was just metres away from her home in Appleton Drive, Marnel Park, when a deer rushed at her out of the bushes.

She was playing a game on her mobile phone while making the short walk home from Everest Community Academy, in Oxford Way, at about 3.25pm on Thursday, October 4, when she heard cries of “deer!” from the other side of the road.

She said: “I looked round to see where it was, and in a split second, it had run at me out of the bushes and I felt antlers in my arm.

“It stood on my toe and head-butted me in the tops of my legs. It was like a hit-and-run.”

Paige was left flat on her back with her phone in pieces, scattered across the road, but thankfully suffered no serious injuries.

Dorothy Ireland, chairman of the Wessex branch of The British Deer Society, said such an occurrence was almost unheard of in a residential area.

She said it was most likely the deer, thought to be a fallow deer, would have caught the scent of a female deer and had been trying to reach her.

She said: “At this time of year, deer are rutting and you must not get close to them.

“When males have the scent of a female, they only have one thing on their mind. This sort of thing is extremely unusual.”

Paige’s mum Kirsten Vanden, who works for Hampshire County Council as the wedding ceremonies co-ordinator and registration officer for north Hampshire, said they have seen a lot of deer in the nearby Basing Wood, but never one so close to their house.

She added: “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing when Paige phoned me and told me what had happened.

“I’ve never heard of anything like it. People think I’m winding them up when I explain what happened.

“Paige is always bumping into everything, so if anyone was going to get bumped into by a deer, it was going to be her.”