BBC presenter believed vandals had smashed windows at Notts home - only to find out it was a ram
A BBC presenter who thought vandals had smashed his patio windows had a surprise when he discovered it was actually a runaway ram.
Quentin Rayner, 58, was stunned when he discovered the patio doors of his home in Southwell covered in cracks.
At first he thought it was down to vandals but then spotted a large adult ram staring at him from the other side of the broken glass on Wednesday.
Mr Rayner, who presents BBC East Midlands Today, grabbed his camera and filmed the animal as it munched on his pot plants.
He said: “I came downstairs and opened the curtains to find our lovely patio doors smashed.
“My first thought was it must be vandals and was about to call the police when I saw this ram lying in the garden chewing away on pot plants.
“Our house is up on a hill and half-a-mile from the nearest field so our theory is the ram escaped and was literally heading for the hills when it came across our house.
“It must have squeezed past the bins at the side of the house and gone over to the patio doors and saw its own reflection and thought it was another ram and butted it.
“It made an awful mess of the double glazing and it must have been butting it for a long time, I’m amazed my wife and I didn’t wake up.”
Mr Rayner and his wife Emma, 55, called police who sent an officer to investigate.
After calling round local agricultural centres, a farmer contacted them to say the ram had escaped from his field.
Mr Rayner said: “We thought it could have been from the agricultural college nearby but they said it didn’t belong to them.
“A local farmer finally arrived and led it away.
“I rang the insurance company and told them, 'You may hear this a lot - but you are never going to believe this'.
“I told them our patio doors had been smashed by an angry ram having a fight with it’s own reflection.
“Their response was ‘that sounds unusual’ but they sent an assessor out who agreed to pay up so we just have to pay the excess.”