The "unofficial mascot" of Anchorage, Alaska, has been put down after a possible poisoning. The New York Times reports that Star VII, a reindeer owned by Albert Whitehead and often seen in parades and other local events, was euthanized on Tuesday, after a mysterious masked intruder entered the animal's pen in February and sprayed him with an unknown substance. But Whitehead says odd things began happening a month before that, telling the AP that someone got inside Star's fenced-in pen, attached to Whitehead's home on a busy Anchorage street, in January. After that incident, Star started losing weight—and on Feb. 20, things escalated.
Security footage showed someone breaking into the 8-year-old male reindeer's pen and setting Star free. Police found the animal wandering in the street and returned him to Whitehead, but the very next night, someone approached the pen and sprayed something inside of it. After that incident, Star developed pneumonia, though Whitehead thought the reindeer was on his way to recovery. But "suddenly he relapsed, and some other issues developed," Whitehead says, leading to the decision to euthanize, per Alaska Public Media.
Authorities believe it was likely the same person who let Star out of his pen and also sprayed him; they say they have no leads thus far. The definitive cause of death is still to come via a necropsy, which could take weeks. Whitehead believes that the substance sprayed at Star was an air freshener, but he's not positive. As for a Star VIII—the Times explains that Anchorage has had multiple Stars over the years, each appointed after the previous one dies—Whitehead isn't sure he's going to continue the tradition, at least not at this moment. "I don't feel safe putting another animal in that pen," he said, though he added that he "would revisit" the idea if a suspect is nabbed. (More reindeer stories.)
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