Guess Who Came To - Rather, Intruded On - Thanksgiving Dinner?

Mike and Paula Richards had an unexpected, uninvited and definitely unappreciated guest at their Whitmore Lake home on Thanksgiving Day.

The family and their guests had just finished a big dinner when Mike left the table o take his dog for a walk. In the yard, a movement caught his eye: Grazing in the yard was a large ram, The Ann Arbor News/MLive reports.

What happened in the moments that followed was pure pandemonium and terror.

Mike retreated to the house to report what he had seen to Paula.The couple stepped outside for closer inspection, and the ram lowered its head and charged at them. They barely made it back in their house, but the pooch was still outside, at the charging ram’s mercy.

Mike left the safety of the house again to save the dog.

“The ram was inside the garage at the time trying to break down that door,” he said, recalling the harrowing experience to the newspaper. “I went to get the dog and when the dog started coming to me, the ram came out of the garage and chased us into the front door.”

The animal was persistent and broke through a glass storm door and was working on the main door, which family members were holding in place on the other side while the ram “just bashed into it over and over again.”

With a house full of guests, including a pregnant woman and an elderly woman with limited mobility, there was only one thing to do.

“At that point it’s clear the ram is trying to get into the house and my wife told me I was going to have to shoot it,” Mike said.

He made enough noise to draw the ram out of the garage and shot it in its tracks in the back yard.

During the commotion, Paula’s pregnant sister-in-law even had a couple of contractions, Paula said in an email to the newspaper.

“When all was said and done, we had a dead ram in the yard, a broken glass door, dented front doors, a completely broken kitchen door, and lots of adrenaline and disbelief running through the room to say the least …” she said.

The couple called the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office to file a report “in case I need to file an insurance claim.” Damage is at least $500.

The ram had apparently escaped from a neighbor’s fenced-in pasture, according to police. No one’s sure exactly why the ram was so aggressive. The farmer who owned it explained that it’s breeding season, so that may have explained the animal’s behavior.

Michigan State University Extension’s Mike Metzger agrees to a point.

“The hormones can take over and the rams certainly would be more aggressive,” he told the newspaper.”But to try to get into someone’s house, that’s very usual behavior.”