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Ill. Man Takes in Santa Claus' Reindeer

Posted on: Wednesday, 21 December 2005, 18:00 CST

LAKE VILLA, Ill. - It doesn't take much sleuthing to guess Rich Rosko's favorite holiday: He owns a Christmas tree farm, built a log cabin at a Wisconsin resort called Christmas Mountain Village and has owned pet reindeer for years.

Now he lays claim to something quintessentially Christmas: one of Santa Claus' reindeer. And he says he can prove it.

Rosko, 48, already had three reindeer on his 6-acre property in this sleepy village 50 miles northwest of Chicago when, earlier this year, he inherited a fourth from a man in nearby Mundelein who had legally changed his name to Santa Claus.

"We have one of Santa Claus' reindeer. I can legally, totally say that, and it would not be fabricated at all," Rosko said with a smile.

Rosko had met the man years ago when he stopped by Rosko's home and asked if he could buy the reindeer. Rosko declined, but referred the man to reindeer breeders. He never heard of him again - until last summer.

Rosko said he got a call from another Mundelein man named Gilbert Van Weelden, who told Rosko that the man named Santa Claus had died of a heart attack. Van Weelden apparently had bought two reindeer owned by Santa Claus and, after one died, he was looking for a proper home for the other.

Rosko agreed to take in the lone reindeer and named it Douglas, after the fir.

"He's really an affectionate, people-person kind of reindeer," Rosko said Wednesday.

Rosko's affinity for all things Christmas began as a child in Chicago, when he vowed to replace his parents' aluminum tree with a real tree when he grew up.

Ten years ago, he bought a Christmas tree farm in Hancock, Wis., and now helps fill more than a dozen tree lots in the Lake County area with Scotch pines, Fraser firs and balsams.

Rosko used logs from the tree farm to build the cabin in Wisconsin, which he and his wife, Karen, nicknamed the Tannenbaum Log House.

The reindeer stay in a pen at the Lake Villa home, where kids occasionally stop by to see the animals.

"There's always the big question from the little ones," Rosko said. "`Can they fly?'"

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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