Keep Your Puny Reindeer

This holiday season, I'd like to take a moment to recognize the Irish Elk. While technically neither Irish nor elk (which, as Stephen J. Gould once noted, puts this deer among the ranks of the English Horn and the Holy Roman Empire), you've got to give this fellow credit for his twelve foot antler span, perhaps best described by 1800s German paleontologist Rathke as "bewunderungswuerdig!"

A bewunderungswuerdig Christmas to all those who celebrate it*, and a happy new year.