Deer flips over Kenton Co. police cruiser

A Kenton County police officer collided with a deer while driving his squad car on Decoursey Pike through Visalia last weekend.

The police department released a video of the encounter, which ended in officer Pittaluga and the deer going their separate ways.

The officer was unharmed, but his cruiser came out with some minor damage. The deer was unfazed by the blow, and after flipping over the hood of the car quickly scampered off into the woods.

Kenton County police wrote in a Facebook post the video can be a good training tool to show how to react when a deer dashes out into the road in front of a driver.

Officer Pittaluga applied his brakes and steered away from the deer in a controlled manner. Although he didn't manage to avoid the collision, he did maintain control of his vehicle throughout the entire incident, even when the large (but apparently agile and acrobatically trained) deer was performing a Triple Axel over the hood of his cruiser.

They also made sure the deer wasn't one of Kris Kringle's.

We did place a call to Santa just to be sure this deer didn't belong to him (we would hate to end up on the naughty list). He was quick to point out that he employs reindeer and that, although this deer did appear to fly, it was not a reindeer (we still aren't clear whether we will be making the nice list or not).