STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Chelli Bradshaw held a couple bunches of bananas in her hands to feed her charges in the alleyway outside Chapter One Bookstore.

It would have been easy to surmise the bananas were for a couple of monkeys. But—jumping Santa Claus!!!—they were for reindeer, instead.

You’d be correct in presuming they don’t grow bananas at the North Pole—or in Lapland, for that matter.

Alise Behar smiles as 2-year-old Vivian Roos, granddaughter of Michael and Juli Roos, studies the reindeer.

But Bradshaw and her cohorts feed Fenn and Bridget bananas and pumpkin—that staple of Halloween and Thanksgiving holidays—along with reindeer chow.

The reindeer, who live on the One Room Reindeer farm in Emmett with two other reindeer, play kickball, charge wheelbarrows and roll around bundled Christmas trees when not out spreading holiday cheer. But they’re all business when they go on the road to places like Chapter One Bookstore. They’ve even visited a funeral home in Boise.

“They’re the only deer species in which both the male and female have antlers,” Sebella Lang told those peering into a fence holding the animals. “They can grow to five feet tall.”

She picked up a tiny antler about a foot long. This was Fenn’s first set of antlers, she said. Now at 18 months Fenn has a beautiful pair of antlers that reaches a yard long and features plenty of points that would make a good coat rack.

Sebella Lang shows how tiny Fenn’s first set of antlers was compared with the rack he sports today.

“Both Bridgette and Fenn have pretty good spatial awareness. They don’t typically run into things with their antlers,” Lang said.

The reindeer love winter, as their thick coat keeps them warm, said Lang. Come summer they can swim 4 to 5 miles an hour. And they can see UV or ultraviolet light—a trait they may have developed to enable them to see white lichen in Arctic snows.

Lang pointed to their crescent-shaped hooves. Their two large toes not only support their weight but act as shovels when they’re digging for food in snow, she said. The pads are hard during winter and become spongy during summer providing extra traction in soft wet tundra.

They produce a clicking sound as they walk—a sound believed to enable them to keep track of one another during blizzard or fog.

Spectators get a close-up view of the reindeer as they watch some of the youngsters feeding the deer bananas.

“They’re just amazing animals,” she said.

Holly Mora and Kelly Cavanaugh plied reindeer seekers with reindeer ears, sugar cookies, hot cocoa, sparkling cider and adult drinks.