Many of us enjoy the holiday that Christmas lights bring, but you have to be careful with your decorations if wildlife wants to drop by.
A Colorado Parks and Wildlife employee recently encountered a prime example of this. Officer Joe Nicholson arrives to assist a moose in Jefferson County, Colorado, which has a string of lights wrapped around its antlers. As you can see in the photos shared by the agency’s Northeast, they’ve been pretty entangled.
A resident in western Jefferson County became entangled in the Christmas lights. Wildlife officer Joe Nicholson was able to reassure Wednesday morning and free it from the light.
Take note and remove any risk of confusion from your property. pic.twitter.com/yEM40rEHvf
– CPW NE area (@CPW_NE) January 6, 2022
Nicholson was able to calm the animal, remove those lights, and get it on the road. In the last photo you can see he’s no worse off in terms of outfit. However, that may not always be the case.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife say that it is important to remove Handle hazards from your yard to keep animals safe. This happened as the agency responded to a number of entanglements throughout the fall. Unfortunately, that includes a person with a hammock wrapped around his or her head and body. The deer died after the circulation had severed its hind legs.
Wildlife officer Casey Westbrook speak, “Usually, we make heroic efforts to save the animals, but sometimes we just can’t save them.”
The agency says there are many hazards from entanglement that can harm animals. Those include hammocks, Christmas lights, tricycles, tires, garden cages, clotheslines, plastic fences, and lawn chairs. Moose and moose are also known to get caught in these items, not just deer.
To avoid an incident like this from happening in your yard, be careful about where you put these items or get rid of them altogether. For Christmas lights, we recommend placing them over 6 feet tall or tightly wrapped around buildings and trees.
