"Elk freed from Dresden office building"

We haven't had one of these stories for ages, from thelocal.de:

The elk, which has been spotted several times in the Dresden area during the weekend, had been grazing nearby when he was startled by a group of onlookers and police and fled.

“This is a sign of panic,” said a press spokesman for forest management company Sachsenforst. “He doesn't know where to go any more.”

After five hours in the office block the animal was anesthetized, loaded into a container and taken away on Monday afternoon. He was released in eastern Saxony.

Which reminds of this story, from The Daily Mail:

Almost 25 years since the Iron Curtain came down, deer roaming the Czech-German border still balk at crossing areas where electric fences one lay.

A study of the animals in the Sumava national park, in the Czech Republic, has discovered that red deer are avoiding the once perilous areas where three parallel electrified fences were patrolled by armed guards - despite the creatures having no living memory of it.

Nearly 500 people died trying to cross the barrier, which isolated the communist world from the West. According to a seven-year study, the invisible border has become instilled in the [deer] population, and will be handed down generations.