It’s a mystery: Who stole, and later poisoned, Anchorage’s iconic downtown reindeer Star?
Star is part of a long Anchorage tradition that started in 1960, when Ivan and Oro Stewart, the owners of a downtown camera store, decided to keep a reindeer as a pet.
The Stewarts kept a series of reindeer — each named Star — that became Anchorage tourist attractions and a city fixture. Albert Whitehead, a family friend, took over the tradition in 2002.
There’s nearly always been a Star at his house, near the Anchorage Park Strip, visited by schoolchildren and tourists. And for the most part, Whitehead says, it has been a joy. He and Star are a slice of familiar Alaska kitsch, taking frequent walks downtown, appearing at events and parades and even showing up on National Geographic and TLC shows.
But recently, the gentle, apple-loving ungulate — the seventh Star — has been the target of a disturbing series of crimes.
“It’s almost like the world is going crazy,” he said. “Who would want to hurt a reindeer?”
The trouble started in January, when Whitehead noticed that someone had cut the chain-link fence to Star’s enclosure. Soon, Star was sick and losing weight. Whitehead chalked the illness up to a disturbance with Star’s rumen, the bacteria-filled stomach that helps reindeer digest food.
Then, on Feb. 20, Star went missing.
Before long, an Anchorage police officer found Star wandering downtown and brought the animal home.
The Anchorage Police Department said that at 8:30 p.m. Feb. 20 it “received reports of a reindeer walking on the Park Strip. When officers arrived on scene, they located STAR the reindeer and escorted him back home to his residence near W 10th Avenue and I Street.”
Whitehead’s partner, Martha Anderson, was stunned to hear Star had been roaming the city alone.
“I couldn’t imagine how Star would be there,” she said. “Star only goes with Albert. How could Star get out?”
Whitehead didn’t know Star had been missing but, after reviewing surveillance video, “learned an unknown male entered his property, cut the locks to the enclosure Star the reindeer lived in, and left the property with Star,” the police said.
The person — wearing dark clothing — had used heavy-duty bolt cutters to get into the locked enclosure, Whitehead said. The video shows that the reindeer, friendly and used to associating humans with treats, followed the man.
Whitehead tried to track Star’s path, following delicate hoofprints across snow on the Park Strip.
While Star was being taken, Whitehead and Anderson had been sitting just feet away, oblivious to the reindeer-napping in their midst. It seemed so brazen, he said. Stealing a reindeer?
Then things got even stranger.
The next evening, Whitehead’s surveillance cameras caught a man — with the same build and clothing, wearing a scarf to cover his face — walking up to Star’s enclosure. The video shows the man spraying something from an aerosol canister for nearly two minutes through the fence.
Star, ever friendly, can be seen approaching the man and getting sprayed in the face before retreating.
While this was unfolding, Whitehead noticed what was happening on his surveillance cameras and rushed out to confront the man, shouting at him to stop and “leave the reindeer alone!”
“I said, ‘What are you doing?’” Whitehead said. “And he said, ‘I’m trying to help Star.‘”
Whitehead gave chase but lost track of the man a few blocks away, he said.
Anchorage police say they are still looking for the man pictured on the security videos. The case is open. Anyone with information about the case can call police at 311 or 907-786-8900, the police department said.
Almost immediately after the spraying incident, Whitehead said, Star got seriously ill. He took Star to a veterinarian in Mat-Su, where Star was diagnosed with pneumonia, respiratory distress and rumen issues that had led to rapid weight loss. Whitehead doesn’t know what the spray was but says he believes Star was harmed or poisoned by it. He thinks it could have been some kind of cleaning spray or an insecticide.
The vet and Whitehead even discussed whether Star was so sick the animal should be put down.
“It hurts,” Whitehead said, his voice quavering. “The decision of putting him down or not.”
Now, Star seems to be recovering, Whitehead said. On Wednesday, the reindeer mouthed apple slices from the palms of visitors and walked around. But Star is still struggling with pneumonia and other illness and is visiting the vet every few days for treatment, Whitehead said.
“I’m not sure he is going to make it, to be honest.”
The current Star is not the first Star to find trouble among Anchorage’s humans.
The first Star died of old age. But in 1985, the second Star met a gruesome and highly-publicized end when she was kidnapped and butchered for meat by a 25-year-old Fairbanks man described in the news as a “convicted meat thief.”
The carcass, head and antlers were found behind Costco on Dimond Boulevard, according to Daily News coverage from the time. The rest of the animal was found in the man’s freezer. Police said he’d borrowed a van to kidnap Star, who was used to riding in them for appearances at children’s birthday parties.
In the newspaper, the owners wondered who would hurt “a friendly animal who is associated with the spirit of Christmas.”
The next Star ate a plastic bag that blew into her enclosure and died, spurring calls for an end to the downtown reindeer tradition that didn’t go anywhere. The fourth died of natural causes. The fifth died of a bacterial infection as a calf. The sixth collapsed and died at 15 years old.
Whitehead feels sure the same person kidnapped and later poisoned Star, even if they thought they were “helping” Star with whatever the spray was. He doesn’t think it’s an animal rights activist, though people from time to time have been critical of Whitehead’s decision to keep a reindeer as a pet in urban Anchorage.
Instead, he thinks it’s someone who is obsessed with his reindeer. Last fall, a man asked insistently to walk Star, Whitehead said. Maybe it’s the same person.
“I think he has a fixation on Star,” Whitehead said.
This story has been republished with permission from the original at the Anchorage Daily News.