Elk Traps Himself in German Office Building

Local Editor

A confused young elk wandered into an office building in the German city of Dresden on Monday, where he waited several hours "largely calmly" to be rescued, police said.

The male animal got stuck in a glass-enclosed foyer of a cafeteria at an office block used by the engineering giant Siemens.
Police closed off the area but the elk - weighing an estimated 800 kilograms- remained calm throughout most of his ordeal.

Watched by a large crowd, officers and representatives of the Dresden zoo and hunting office at first tried to coax the animal into a large trailer.

But after several unsuccessful attempts, they used a tranquilizer on the animal so they could hoist him out of the narrow entryway.

It was not immediately clear where the animal, thought to be between two and three years old, should end up.
"We cannot have him at the zoo because the fence is not high enough," a zoo spokeswoman said.

The elk had been spotted in the eastern city in recent days and earlier on Monday showed up at the parking lot of a shopping center.
After a crowd gathered and police were summoned, the animal bolted toward the office building.

A spokesman for the forestry authority for Saxony state said the elk had probably come from Poland or the Czech Republic, which border the region.

"There are various migratory routes that run through Saxony," he said.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team