Video shows stunning scene after wild animal runs amok in store: 'Poor confused baby'

A viral clip on Facebook captured the absurd scene of a wild deer encounter inside a big-box home improvement store. 

What happened?

A group of customers carried the deer out of the store as stunned onlookers watched. Abby Hensley (@Abby.Hensley.10), whose husband was part of the deer removal effort, filmed the scene and shared it on her Facebook. 

DEER RAN INTO MOLINE MENARDS😂😂😂🤦🏼‍♀️ Went through the gate and kept running! 😭

Posted by Abbey Hensley on Monday, December 15, 2025

"Deer ran into Menards," the Facebook video's caption read. "Went through the gate and kept running." 

The Facebook clip shows three men carrying a motionless deer through the automatic doors of Menards in Moline, Illinois.

"Poor confused baby," one Facebook user commented. Other commenters reckoned that the deer ran into the home improvement store in search of shelter from the cold. 

Why are human-wildlife encounters important?

Accidental encounters with wildlife, as in this instance of a random wandering deer in shopping spaces, can be a public safety risk. While deer attacks are rare, they can still occur, especially when deer feel threatened or are protecting their fawn. 

Their appearance in human activity areas also reveals increasing environmental pressures, including habitat loss due to human development, food scarcity, and temperature stress. Deer may wander into residential areas to escape being hunted, to look for food in manicured lawns and abundant gardens, and occasionally, seek shelter to survive harsh winter or summer conditions. 

Increased human-wildlife conflicts are clear signs that environmental and human pressures are making coexistence between humans and wildlife much more difficult, which could reshape local ecosystems. 

What's being done to reduce human-wildlife encounters?

Human development in native habitats, including developing roads, bridges, and fragmented suburban communities, has encroached on the land that wildlife like deer depend on, which leads to disoriented wildlife and increased human-wildlife conflicts. 

While it is not entirely feasible to destroy what has already been built, efforts to create designated protected habitats for wildlife to occupy may help reduce these chance encounters. 

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Last year, the Nature Conservancy secured three parcels of land, amounting to 454 acres, in northwestern New Jersey, creating and protecting ideal habitat spaces for endangered wildlife species. 

In California, state officials have voted to extend the timeline to fund important conservation projects with an annual budget of $30 million — an initiative that was supposed to end by 2030 — until July 1, 2035.

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