Adult elk with large antlers, light brown fur, gift shop shelves filled with souvenirs and sunglasses displays. 10:56
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The gift shop's calmest shopper is a bull elk

A bull elk has let himself into the Water Wheel Gift Corner in Estes Park, Colorado, and the owner is stuck inside with him. "I don't know what to do now," he says. more

Estes Park is a town famous for its elk. It throws a festival for them every year, and the animals wander the streets like they pay taxes there. This one the locals know by name. They call him Gentle Ben, and on a cold day he walks in the front door, antlers first, and starts to browse.

An elk's antlered head rises above a gift shop crowded with hanging dreamcatchers and stuffed animals. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Gentle Ben, a bull elk the locals know by name, takes a look around the gift shop.

The owner is less charmed. He is scared, he says, and he's thinking about his inventory, because the antlers on this animal look too wide for the aisles. They should be sweeping shelves clean, and they're not. Gentle Ben turns in the tight spaces and never catches a thing.

Mostly he stands there and chews. The officers' plan is apples, set outside the door to draw him out, and soon a crowd has gathered out there too, phones up, taking pictures.

It works, for a while. Gentle Ben steps out into the cold and the owner gets his store back. Then the elk turns around and walks straight back in. By the second visit the owner has settled on an explanation, and it is that the elk just loves his store. Later the officers set the apples out a second time.

Adult elk with large antlers, light brown fur, gift shop shelves filled with souvenirs and sunglasses displays. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
A bull elk has let himself into the Water Wheel Gift Corner in Estes Park, Colorado, and the owner is stuck inside with him.

The comments have a theory about why, and it's a kind one. He came in to get out of the weather, people figure, and found a warm place to chew his cud. One viewer calls him an unusual security guard, and another notices that he matches the decor. Many bring up the antlers, which got in, around the shelves and out again without snagging a thing, leaving the shop, as one person put it, in better shape than some people's kids do.

Estes Park already knew him by name. The Water Wheel Gift Corner does now, too.