Georgia Deer Crash Lands In Mexican Restaurant

Diners at a Taco Mac restaurant near Atlanta, Georgia, got more than the hot sauce, tacos and enchiladas they came in for when a deer came crashing through the restaurant’s front window.

The 200-pound animal charged into the eatery and sent glass flyingaround 3:15 p.m. Sunday, just as diners in the crowded restaurant were enjoying late lunches and watching football games.

“The deer comes straight through the parking lot, smashes through the window right in front of the host stand and goes around the corner around the host stand,” Adam Buckner, manager of the Taco Mac in Alpharetta, Georgia, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Video from the restaurant’s surveillance camera shows the deer jumping around, as if it were just as surprised by restaurant’s diners as they were of the deer.

One customer was nicked in the leg by glass and the deer lost an antler, but no one was seriously hurt in the incident, which lasted less than a minute.

Unfortunately for the patrons, the deer exited with as much of a flourish as he entered. It followed a server onto the restaurant’s back patio through an open door, but then decided he wanted  back in and began head-butting the door, which customers and staff quickly tried to secure.

The deer eventually found its own way off of the patio and hopped a fence back to freedom.

Officials have no idea what drew the deer to the Taco Mac restaurant, which is located between two highways, but it’s not the first time in recent days an animal has ventured into much more human — and suburban — territory.

In Eatontown, New Jersey, on Monday, a deer broke through a glass door at the Monmouth Mall and made its way into Journeys, a shoe and clothing store.

Police said the two-year-old deer looked at himself in the store’s mirrors before hiding in a storage room where it was eventually caught and shot with a tranquilizer by state wildlife officials before being released back in a nearby preserve

Back in Georgia, last September, a Publix supermarket in Suwanee was invaded by a pair of fawn who darted throughout the store.  The deer were small enough, however, that store workers were able to catch them and release them outside.