Escaped reindeer roaming Mat-Su

MAT-SU — Are they nervous with Christmas on the horizon or is it just a coincidence that multiple reindeer have gone a-wandering in the Valley this week?

Tuesday, the Facebook page for the Williams Reindeer Farm in Butte lit up with a handful of notices and updates.

“Two of our Reindeer have decided to head to Anchorage on their own. Yes they have escaped and where last seen on Glenn Hwy by hospital,” one of the updates read.

A subsequent report in an online newspaper and a call to the farm confirmed the details:

But the reindeer weren’t actually William reindeer. They’d been sold to a family on Trunk Road. One was picked near the highway when a Mat-Su Borough Animal Control officer roped it, another was found in a potato field and then coaxed into a trailer after making it all the way to Sears.

Both made it home safe and sound.

“THE REINDEER HAVE BEEN FOUND. THANKS EVERYONE,” the farm reported on Facebook the same day they went missing.

So Santa’s won’t have to fly with six reindeer instead of eight. But the jolly old elf might yet wind up shorthanded. The pair along Trunk Road weren’t the only reindeer sighted on the loose in the Valley this week.

Though the Williams farm is a tourist attraction and therefore the most well-known, there are other Valley reindeer farms.

And apparently one in Big Lake lost an animal, according to e-mails and photos floating through that community last week.

The first report on Nov. 4 mistook it for a caribou. Which is understandable, considering reindeer are just domesticated caribou.

“If you look closer at his antlers, if he was a caribou those antlers with all those tines should be a lot thicker for their development and length. Also, his legs are really small in proportion to his body size. If you zoom in you can see that he also has a pot belly, which a caribou or reindeer would only achieve in captivity from a solid diet with little activity. A caribou on the move in the summer would be in great shape, but this gut makes him a little obese (something that you don’t see very often in the wild),” wildlife biologist Todd Rinaldi wrote in an email Nov. 5. “Definitely a rare sighting, but there is a question that remains — who lost a reindeer?

Sightings trickled in all week — Fairview Loop, Peninsula Drive. By Saturday, it was unclear whether the reindeer had made it home, but most agreed it had likely gone missing from a farm in the Big Lake area.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.