Reindeer Is the Star on Walks

Snow fell gently as Albert Whitehead set out with his pet reindeer on a lavender leash for their regular stroll through downtown Anchorage.

As always, the sight of Star being walked like a dog along busy streets sparked laughter, pointing fingers and slack-jawed stares. It’s a scene that’s been played out in Alaska’s largest city for more than 40 years by a long line of reindeer, all females named Star.

“My, aren’t you charming?” a passerby gushed as Star VI snuffled the air in search of the homemade bread that Whitehead carries in his pockets during their jaunts.

“That’s not something you see every day,” Russ Widener, a businessman from Syracuse, N.Y., said a few blocks away as he snapped a photograph, then moved in for a closer look at the frisky 4-year-old with the long, dainty antlers.

Whitehead, 64, who helped care for Star’s predecessors, said the current reindeer is probably the friendliest of them all, having been raised exclusively by humans after being abandoned by her mother at birth.

Besides Star’s downtown excursions, she participates in parades, visits schoolchildren and pulls kids on sleds.

All the Stars have been big on civic duty.

When she’s not gallivanting around, Star lives in a 55-by-30-foot fenced pen outside Whitehead’s home. Oblivious to the cold, she’ll lie still for hours, chewing willow leaves and twitching only her ears as she’s being blanketed with falling snow.

But when people pass by on foot, look out. She comes alive, tagging alongside the fence as they walk by. One regular visitor runs back and forth along her pen, and she trots along right next to him, Whitehead said.

“She’s a people deer,” he said. “This is the best place for her.”

The tradition began in 1962 when Anchorage pioneers Oro and Ivan Stewart got their first Star from a Native reindeer herder. As with every subsequent Star, the reindeer had a little tuft of white on her forehead.

Whitehead, then a young soldier stationed at Ft. Richardson, had befriended the Stewarts by that time, sometimes helping out at their downtown camera shop.

Whitehead left the state, but returned a decade later with a wife and two children to pick up the friendship with the Stewarts where it left off. That involved walking Star I -- outings that are still vivid in the memory of Whitehead’s son, now 35.

“Growing up with deer was really cool,” Bryan Whitehead said. “I don’t know how it would be like not to have one.”

The original Star lived to age 23, pretty ancient by reindeer standards.

The next Star wasn’t so fortunate.

In 1985, a man stole Star II from her pen, beat her to death in a field and butchered her. “My heart went down when I realized she was missing,” Whitehead said.

Police were tipped that a convicted meat thief from Fairbanks was bragging about killing Star. Michael Yearty pleaded no contest and was sentenced to one year in jail.

The case prompted a reindeer herder from Nome to donate a young reindeer to the Stewarts that winter. But Star III was not destined for a long life either. She died in early 1986 after eating plastic bags that wound up in her pen.

Two Anchorage veterinarians tried desperately to save her.

“She died with her head resting in my arms,” Whitehead said.

Ivan Stewart died that same year at 74, and Whitehead picked up even more caretaker duties.

In the early days, Star’s pen wasn’t locked. That changed with the deaths of the Stars. The Stewarts also put up a sign asking people not to feed her plastic bags.

Still, in spring of 1987, a man scaled Star IV’s enclosure and broke off a foot-long piece of her antler. The bloody shaft was found a few dozen feet from the pen. Star recovered, and Oro Stewart fully enclosed the pen and installed a burglar alarm.

Star IV lived to age 17, finally brought down by arthritis in May 2002.

By then, Oro Stewart was months away from death from congestive heart failure and decided that she was too sick to care for any more animals. But she later changed her mind and told Whitehead that she wanted a new reindeer. He told his 85-year-old friend that he would take care of the next Star for the rest of its life.

Star V was 2 months old when she arrived from Nome that summer, enthralling tourists and locals during walks downtown.

But suddenly, the fawn became sick and died just a couple of weeks before Stewart. The cause of Star’s death was later determined to be a bacterial infection similar to tetanus.

“She was just a little sweetheart, the prettiest deer we’ve had,” Whitehead said, nodding at his current charge. “But this one is by far the best.”

Whitehead said he agonized for a long time over whether to continue the tradition.

Star VI was born in April 2001 at a reindeer farm north of Anchorage. Her young mother immediately walked away, never to connect with the reindeer, who initially was named Noel by farmer Tom Williams and his family. Because of her tenuous beginning, she’s fairly petite, only 4 1/2 feet tall, a good half-foot shorter than average for her age.

The Williams family took the baby reindeer into their home, feeding her lamb formula around-the-clock, letting her sleep inside, bonding with her. Williams had no qualms about turning her over to Whitehead, a longtime acquaintance.

“After a week or so, he was her new mother,” Williams said. “Deer are very herd-oriented and he is her herd.”