Goofy elk gets itself hopelessly trapped in hammock behind North Carolina home

An elk had to be rescued from an awkward predicament in Western North Carolina after its massive antlers got tangled in a family’s backyard hammock.

It happened in the popular tourist town of Maggie Valley on Thanksgiving, and the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office confirmed a deputy freed the potentially dangerous animal by climbing onto a nearby building and cutting the hammock ropes from above.

“The Thanksgiving antics have already started!” the sheriff’s office posted on Facebook. “An elk on Windswept Way in Maggie Valley ended up tangled in a hammock. Great work to Corporal Ken Stiles for cutting it free.”

Jim Beaver of Maggie Valley said it was his hammock and he posted video of the elk tugging, pulling and twisting to free itself from the strings. He believes the elk got entangled sometime early Thanksgiving morning.

“He’s been there a while, look at the ground,” Beaver says in the video, noting the elk’s stomping turned the grass into dirt. “If I didn’t think he’d come after me, I’d climb on that tree and cut him loose. But it’s just too dangerous.”

However, that’s exactly what the sheriff’s deputy did, and it worked.

Beaver told WLOS that he has seen groups of elk in his yard in the past, ”playing with the hammock.”

“They can be really quiet,” he told the station. “We often will be sitting on the porch and look up and see four to six of them having quietly wandered in the yard to eat apples.”

This story was originally published December 2, 2019 at 7:01 AM with the headline "Goofy elk gets itself hopelessly trapped in hammock behind North Carolina home."