Early Tuesday morning, police in Kalamazoo, Michigan had a run in with a deer that was SUPPOSEDLY dead.

--It happened while they were checking on some guy in a parked car outside a hotel.  The man told the officers that he'd hit a deer earlier in the night . . . and that it was in the trunk of his car, so he could take it home and EAT it.  (???)

--But sadly, he didn't get to do that.  Because when one of the cops went to look in the trunk, the deer jumped out, stumbled around, then ran off into the woods.

--There's dashboard footage of it online.  It doesn't show what happened next, but the cops said the deer looked perfectly fine, and was probably just stunned.

(--WZZM13.com has the video, but you have to sit through an annoying 15-second ad every time you watch it.  Search for "Dead Deer Springs from Car Trunk."  You can also find it on YouTube, until it gets yanked.)