Elderly widow gets visits from a stag each day but not everyone who has seen it is pleased
Sometimes what appears to be a lovely story is actually a lot more complicated. The worst part is when commenters want to ruin it for everyone by pointing out problems. Sometimes they’re right, which is the worst part when they’re also rude.
A few years ago, a feel-good story about an elderly woman and a stag made its rounds on the Internet. In 2017, a photo of 81-year-old Mette Kvam and her friend – who she named Flippen – went far and wide. Many people were charmed by their story.
Kvam is a widow who lives alone in Aurland, Norway and the stag first came by her house one day in 2014. They seemed to have a connection and the woman fed him a snack through the window. The snack has been translated as “bread,” “cookie,” and “biscuit,” but we don’t really know what it was. Needless to say, it wasn’t a Snickers bar or anything.
After that, “Flippen” started coming by the house every day – often twice a day – to visit and receive a treat, according to a report by Inside Edition.
People in the town knew of their friendship and agreed not to hunt the beautiful stag as a result.
One of Kvam’s family friends, Britt Haugsevje Vangen, managed to get some footage from one of their encounters.
She caught the animal from both outside and inside the house, showing how willing the stag was to let the elderly widow pat him on the head and hand feed him.
“She says that they are so lucky for having each other,” Vangen told Caters News. “Mette has no kids and since her husband passed away she has no one ― she only has Flippen in her life now.”
Now, it should go without saying that you should never feed animals in the wild – they are not pets. Giving any wild animal food has a number of negative consequences. First, they typically can’t digest human food. Second, animals can get aggressive with humans once they come to associate us with food. This makes them more likely to be put down (since they may hurt people who choose not to feed them). And, of course, it can also interfere with their natural hunting instincts, making them more reliant on humans.
However, in this case, Kvam’s relationship with Flippen seemed to work out ok. He’s a big enough animal that this was not a significant source of food for him, he never brought his friends with him, he was kind and gentle, and their friendship meant that he was much less likely to be hunted.
But this did not stop people from losing their minds in the comments section of the videos that were posted. However, most simply scolded.
It’s not worth sharing the more hateful comments, which quickly get personal and question people’s intelligence or education level. But it is worth noting that the majority of comments, especially on Facebook appeared to be negative when it came to this old widow feeding the wild animal.
Yes, it’s a bad idea to feed wildlife, but in this case, the relationship might have just saved this beautiful beast’s life.
Be sure to scroll down to see footage from one of their many encounters.
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Source: HuffPost, Caters News, Inside Edition, Inside Edition via YouTube