Tough Sledding for Reindeer

A half-dozen reindeer herds that usually spend the Christmas season prancing in parades and around shopping malls have been grounded this year not by bad weather at the North Pole, but by government officials who fear the animals could spread chronic wasting disease.

Here at Operation Santa Claus, one of the nation's largest reindeer herds, Cindy and Mike Gillaspie are keeping nearly all 90 of their animals home after they couldn't get permits in 28 states to show their reindeer.

For the Gillaspies, idle reindeer are like idle factory space: Neither makes any money.

"I don't know what we're going to do," said Cindy Gillaspie. "Maybe we'll turn them all into sausage."

Chronic wasting, a fatal illness attacking deer and elk, is caused by a mutant protein, or prion, that attacks brain tissue. Experts don't know whether reindeer run the same infection risk as their cousins, but to be safe, most Central and Eastern states have banned out-of-state animals.

"Some states, like Virginia, had a complete lockdown and wouldn't let people move animals even in their own state," said Pat Lavery of Mayfield, N.Y., president of the 100-member Reindeer Owners and Breeders Assn. Virginia has since relented, he said, and local owners can display their animals but out-of-state herds are barred.

In some places, the ban threatens tradition. Officials at Uniontown Mall in Uniontown, Pa., learned in July that for the first time in 15 years their annual Christmas parade wouldn't have its showpiece: Santa in a sleigh pulled by the Gillaspies' reindeer.

And a Christmas parade without Santa in a sleigh doesn't have much appeal.

"We had Santa come down a chimney instead," said Debbie Julian, senior marketing director for the mall. "It was really tough to come up with something different."

Nearly all the members of the reindeer owners group raise the animals for money, mostly renting them out for holiday shows and displays. The Gillaspies are among the few to have made the leap from hobby to full-time business, one of only a half-dozen herd owners who send their reindeer to other states.

The Gillaspies focus on the East Coast, Cindy Gillaspie said, because malls and other businesses there will pay three times as much -- up to $4,500 a day for four reindeer and a sleigh -- as their counterparts on the largely snow-less West Coast. Reindeer are a more integral part of Christmas traditions on the East Coast, she said, and on the West Coast animal-rights activists are more prevalent.