WHITEFORD - Brian Adelhardt's seven reindeer are grounded this year.
His Applewood Farm - 100 acres straddling the Mason-Dixon Line in Harford County and southern Pennsylvania - planned to provide animals for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's holiday pops concerts, for the Harford Mall, for the town of Oakland's Christmas parade.
Instead, they are staying home - on the Pennsylvania part of Adelhardt's property because reindeer are not allowed to live in Maryland - and receiving school groups and other visitors.
There will be few, if any, reindeer in Maryland this holiday season: not hanging out with Santa at shopping malls, not prancing in small-town parades, not greeting visitors at Christmas tree farms.
Because of fears of chronic wasting disease, which is devastating deer herds in the West, Maryland officials are rushing to close the state's borders to the animals, dashing many reindeer-themed Christmas displays.
More than half of the states have restricted the importation of these cold-weather cousins of Comet, Cupid and the rest, kept on farms year-round and trotted out in December for some extra cash and cheer. (Santa's herd, of course, is exempt).
"It translates to dollars," said Adelhardt, who has owned Applewood for 28 years and added reindeer two years ago. "I have one month of the year to get any income from them. And we're not taking ours off the farm" this year.
The spread of chronic wasting disease, or CWD, has panicked wildlife agencies across the country. There is no cure for the disease, a brain disorder that attacks some species of cervid (the deer family) - though it has not been found in reindeer. Exactly how it spreads is unknown, and it is not believed to affect humans.
First detected in the 1960s in Colorado, CWD has been found in nine states and two Canadian provinces. Last year, the threat moved even closer.
"When it popped up in Wisconsin and now Illinois and then Minnesota, those are the first times it was appearing east of the Mississippi - that crossed a massive geographic divide, if you will," said Jerry Feaser, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, which has temporarily banned deer imports in that state.
"If we are not careful now, during this temporary ban, we risk not only the $4.8 billion economy that hunting is, but we also would seriously impact our captive cervid industry from elk to deer to reindeer, you name it."
Adelhardt is in a difficult spot. For now, he is allowed to show his reindeer in Maryland, but keeping them in the state has been banned since a 1980s rabies scare.
A proposed ban that would keep all new deer out of the state and prohibit their transportation in Maryland could be in place within weeks, said Bob Beyer, associate director of the game management program of the state Department of Natural Resources. The measure would be among the strictest in the nation and would apply to deer kept on farms for hunting or meat - not just reindeer.
But if Adelhardt brings his deer to Maryland for a visit before the ban is imposed, he could not return them to Pennsylvania because of that state's ban on imports.
"Now he could bring them here legally but he can't take them back, so he's stuck," Beyer said. "[This year] the ones who want to see reindeer at Christmas are going to have to go to the zoo or watch them on TV."
At the BSO this year, holiday concerts will instead have people in reindeer costumes posing with children for photographs. At Watson's Garden Center in Lutherville, camels, donkeys and sheep are standing in this month as a living Nativity scene in place of Santa's official helpers.
There are more than 200 reindeer owners in the country. Only a few rely entirely on income from exhibiting their animals - and they are suffering mightily this year.
"I can't stress enough how I feel for the Mr. Adelhardts of the world," Beyer said. "But it's a serious thing. We have to err on the side of caution until we know more about this disease."
Adelhardt hopes to persuade Pennsylvania and Maryland to make an exception for reindeer before next year's holiday season.
The ban on travel also has swept across the country this year, and reindeer owners everywhere are feeling its effects.
Cindy and Mike Gillaspie own 10 acres in central Oregon devoted to raising more than 90 reindeer, hence the name Operation Santa Claus. For them, the weeks leading up to Christmas have always meant taking teams of reindeer to towns, shopping malls and tree farms up and down the East Coast.
This year, Cindy Gillaspie started making calls in the summer and learned that many states wouldn't let them in this year. She counted 28 states before throwing up her hands.
"Our business is probably down 90 to 95 percent," she said. They are exhibiting only in California, Nevada and Oregon this year - and they don't have many contacts on the West Coast because they have found that their business is best in the East. Until now.
So this year, for the first time since they joined the farm in 1984, they didn't breed their reindeer. "We didn't want another 20 mouths to feed," Cindy Gillaspie said.
If the states don't open their borders next year, the Gillaspies say, they will have to explore other options. They understand the concerns about CWD, but they think some states have overreacted. They might not be able to afford to keep the creatures.
"I wouldn't have a problem selling them to a meat broker and earning some money that way," she said. "The questionable part is people go, 'Oh, that's Santa's reindeer.' Frankly, if it means keeping the reindeer here so people can see them vs. losing my home and my business because I can't pay my feed bill, there really is no question who goes.
"You create the magic this time of year, but you've got 10 months of reality."
Pat C. Lavery, president of the Reindeer Owners and Breeders Association and owner of Santa's Hitching Post outside Albany, N.Y., has watched the trade in exotic animals go up and down, "worse than the stock market." Four or five years ago, he said, a breeding pair of ostriches fetched $50,000; now a pair goes for $50.
Lavery started raising reindeer about a decade ago figuring they would be sure-fire money-makers. Things were going so well that he thought he might retire from the trailer business and raise reindeer full time. Then came the CWD scare.
"Santa Claus comes every year. I felt the market would always be steady," Lavery said. "But if all of a sudden you have lockdowns, it's going to kill the industry."
Applewood Farm is set up to be a winter wonderland. Tuesdays through Fridays during the holiday season, Adelhardt entertains school groups. They see trees decorated with multicolored strands of lights, watch model trains circling an old barn, take a hayride - and, of course, visit with Emma, Minnie and the rest of the herd. On weekends, Applewood is a cut-your-own Christmas tree farm.
On a recent morning, a group of preschoolers from Monkton watched as Adelhardt fed raisins to Minnie. The animals also eat apples, carrots and reindeer food he buys at a local feed store, Adelhardt told the kids. A few removed their mittens so they could pet Minnie's soft coat.
The thermometer on the Adelhardts' porch said it was 20 degrees - prime reindeer weather. In the summer, the animals spend their days in a barn with fans set on high speed to keep them cool. This herd hails from Teller, Alaska, where North America's first herd was delivered in the 1890s. Back then, they were brought over from Russia to provide food, clothing and other essentials to the Eskimos, who were starving because of overfishing by California's whaling fleet.
When Adelhardt and his wife, Pat, bought the farm in the 1970s, they planned to raise beef cattle. But grain prices were high at the time, so they sold their grain instead of feeding it to the animals. They started growing trees about 20 years ago. They added pumpkins six years ago. Reindeer came in 2000, mostly to supplement the tree farm, after Brian spent three weeks in Alaska for a reindeer roundup and decided to buy four.
He wants to continue to share them.
"They're a magical animal," he says. "I don't feel the reindeer are getting a fair shake."