Deer knocks down runner

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TWO HARBORS, Minn., Oct. 3 (UPI) -- A junior varsity soccer player in northern Minnesota suffered a concussion and other injuries when a deer knocked her down while she was running along a trail.

Kaydi Hooey, 13, told the Lake County News-Chronicle she and her Two Harbors High School teammates were running last Thursday when she heard the other girls start screaming.

"I heard something behind me and I turned around and it hit me," Hooey said. "I was like, 'Oh my God, did this happen to me?'"

Her mother said the hit was "like a football tackle."

"She was hit in the lower back, lifted off her feet, carried a short distance and fell to the ground," Janis Hooey said in an email to the newspaper. "The deer continued into the woods."

Hooey wasn't so lucky. She had a concussion, a gash on her back, muscle spasms and assorted bumps and bruises. She also is riding the bench for a week while she recuperates.

Still, Hooey showed good humor in her Facebook update: "I was swept off my feet by a deer, dumped and now am heartbroken," it said.