Cowboy ends reindeer’s games

The exhausted reindeer.

What transpired Thursday morning in Santa Maria is almost too fantastical to believe. It’s the kind of adventure one could expect to find alongside stories of a jolly man in a red suit squeezing down chimneys and talking snowmen. A runaway reindeer scampered through busy Santa Maria streets, fields and residential neighborhoods until she was at last safely captured by a lasso-wielding cowboy. Even the cowboy who saved the day, Tepusquet rancher Bob Acquistapace, realizes the story is hard to swallow. “I’m glad that it’s going to be down in print, because otherwise people would not believe me,” he said after the incident, clad in a cowboy hat and boots with spurs. The female reindeer escaped about 9:20 a.m. Thursday as she was being loaded into a trailer to be taken from the Hopper Bros. Christmas tree lot at the Santa Maria Fairpark to the Hopper Bros. tree lot in Paso Robles. The 9-year-old deer, who doesn’t have a name that Hopper Bros. owners know of, is doing well and back with the tree lot owners following her wild reindeer chase...more