The reindeer of Texas

Not a lot of people remember this but there was a time when reindeer roamed wild in Texas and spread cheer and wonder all over the state and beyond, during the holidays. Nitpickers will argue that the reindeer weren’t wild, but they were here, all right, thanks to the tireless efforts of a man named Grady Carothers, a traditional Texas rancher in Mills County who one day decided Texas needed some reindeer. 

Carothers’ inspiration was his youngest son, Jack, who wanted to see the reindeer when “Santa” dropped by the house one Christmas. The Santa imposter told the boy the deer were outside. Jack tried to follow Santa out of the house to see the reindeer but had to be held back, lest he discover the ruse. The sight of his son being forcibly restrained from leaving the house to see Santa’s reindeer haunted Carothers for weeks. Maybe forever.

 Rather than vowing to stop lying to his children about Santa and the reindeer he resolved to go get some actual reindeer and bring them home to Texas. He set about doing that, oblivious to the guffaws of neighbors and otherwise good friends. He wrote a slew of letters to postmasters and various Chambers of Commerce in Alaska with nary a reply from the Great White North. 

Encouragement came from an unlikely source. The manager of a local department store told Carothers that the Alaska Native Service (ANS) managed the reindeer for the Inuit people, so maybe he should get in touch with ANS. He did. Three times the service told him no but Carothers persisted until 1946 when the ANS relented and issued him a permit for six reindeer. He and his oldest son caught the next plane to Nome. From there they traveled another 100 miles east to Galvin, where Carothers paid $50 a piece for the six reindeer. 

Just as reindeer aren’t native to Texas, they aren’t native to Alaska either. The U.S. government shipped the first herds there from Lapland and Siberia around 1892 to provide food, transportation and clothing for the Inuit. An old Norwegian, wise in the ways of reindeer, persuaded Carothers to leave the reindeer with him in Seattle until fall, which Carothers did.  

Texas was woefully short on reindeer moss— there was none— but Carothers taught, or more likely forced the reindeer to enjoy breakfast oats, which we all know as oatmeal. (Why Quaker didn’t try to cash in on this— “Hearty Enough For Santa’s Reindeer”— is hard to fathom.) Carothers had struggles aplenty. For starters, he had trouble getting runners attached to his sled and a trigger-happy neighbor couldn’t distinguish a reindeer from the white-tailed variety and shot off Donder’s horns. But, again, Carothers persisted. (Donder survived and grew some new horns.) 

By 1950 Grady Carothers had three teams of reindeer that appeared in around 200 towns and cities in Texas and also in New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Mississippi, Arkansas and other reindeer-deprived states. He contracted with local chambers of commerce, shopping centers and schools, putting on as many as three shows a day and transporting the equipment in vans from town to town and state to state. He and two of his cowhands became, by default, the state’s only reindeer wranglers 

Carothers estimated the total cost of each reindeer, counting expenses, at  bout $1,000 in the early days. He charged $200 for a quick stop in a small town and $1,000 for a longer stop in a full-fledged city. Reindeer pulled Santa and his sleigh for 40 years, including an appearance in a rose-covered sleigh at the 1955 Tournament of Roses Parade in California. 

Carothers, who died in 2004, one day after his 98^th birthday, made 15 more trips to Alaska to get reindeer, including females so he could breed his own replacements—native Texas reindeer!  He kept the various Donders and Dashers and the others on his Mills County ranch until Carothers and Son Enterprises moved to California, where the reindeer appeared at Santa Claus Land and in fall parades and Grady drove the stagecoach at Knotts Berry Farm.

Of his reindeer wrangling days, Carothers said: “It wasn’t easy, but nothing ever is ”