The May day was turning into evening. The sounds of everyday life quietened down, and one by one the lights began to come on in the windows of a high-rise building in Helsinki. Work had finished, the children had returned from school and in many homes kitchens were already preparing dinner. The usual, safe peace had settled over the neighbourhood.
***
At the same time, there was movement at the edge of a nearby forest. Bushes rustled and branches swayed until a deer's head poked out from between the trees and vegetation. It was watching the road ahead and the urban area in the distance. All the movement, bright lights and strange smells seemed frightening, but also immensely fascinating. It saw a world in front of it that was completely different from the twilight of the forest behind it. Gathering courage for a moment, the deer stood still, unmoving, until suddenly it broke into a run. A motorist on his left braked with a screech of his tyres, and watched in amazement as the brown animal ran towards the settlement.
But the environment was completely alien to it. There were too many noises and too many people, and very soon the deer began to long to return to its familiar home, the safe obscurity of the forest. He ran between the garbage heaps, the garden fences and the cars, trying to find his way back. When he reached the yard of an apartment building, the deer stopped and saw a window in front of him. There were people moving around behind it, and it was this sight that he now stopped to look at.
The world and thoughts of animals are sometimes a great mystery to people. It's hard to find a reason, but this time the deer bent its head down, accelerated to full speed and slammed itself against the window pane.
***
Banging, screeching, screaming. Broken glass, fallen chairs and vases. A chaos that the people in the apartment could never have imagined would happen. There they were, in the same living room, people and deer. They stared at each other, wondering in the silence what on earth they were supposed to be saying.
On that May evening, two calls were made. One to the emergency centre, the other to 24 Center. The assignment was very unusual: a deer had crashed into an apartment building through a ground floor window. 24 Center immediately dispatched a glass technician to install a new window. The emergency centre dispatched the authorities, who took care of the rest.
Night soon fell over the city. As the sun set behind the horizon, everything seemed back to normal. But in one apartment block there was a new window box, and the people behind it now had an incredible story to tell. It was about a deer that paid a visit to their home in the middle of the weekday evening.
Helsingin Sanomat article available at: https://www.hs.fi/pkseutu/art-2000006125116.html
