An unexpected visitor smashed through two windows at Phillips Ford in Carthage Thursday before making a dramatic escape.

Dealership owner Tommy Phillips was standing in his showroom next to a Ford F-150 pickup about noon when he heard what sounded like an explosion. He turned around to see the Christmas tree that had been standing in the bed of the truck fall to the floor.

“When I turned, I just saw the tree going down,” Phillips said. “I thought, ‘what in the world could have exploded?’ There was nothing in the back of that truck. I hadn’t even noticed the window, and I walked over and looked in it, and all of a sudden a deer poked its head up. My goodness!”

Turns out the deer — a doe — was one of two that attempted a treacherous journey across U.S. 15-501 across from the dealership. One didn’t make it — it was instantly killed by a car on the highway. The other kept running until it leapt through one of Phillips’ large plate-glass windows and made an improbable landing in the bed of the gleaming white truck, which suffered only one minor ding on the tailgate.

Business manager Jonathan Garrison said the incident brings new meaning to the company motto, “built Ford tough.”

The deer managed to get out of the bed, and tried to escape the dealership without much success. Phillips said it slipped and fell several times on the slick floor.

Obviously disoriented, it made its way down a hallway and into the dealership’s general office. At one point, it stumbled into a bathroom. It even managed to trap itself inside a storage closet.

Phillips and his staff tried to coerce the deer out the door, but it instead made a futile attempt to smash its way out another plate-glass window, cutting its neck in the process.

It finally found its way to the door and ran off into the woods. Phillips sent a couple of employees after it to make sure it was OK, but they didn’t find it.

Fortunately, no one was hurt in the incident. Phillips said one customer was in an office with a salesman at the time. Most of the staff had gone to lunch.

The deer left shards of broken glass “everywhere,” Phillips said. Evidence of the deer could be found in blood and fur deposits on the truck tailgate and on the windows.

It was an experience that Phillips and his staff will never forget.

“Pretty good excitement for about four or five minutes,” he said. “It wasn’t so much scary as it was a surprise.”

Contact John Krahnert III at (910) 693-2473 or by e-mail at jkrahnert@thepilot.com.