More than a week ago, 9NEWS posted a story about a woman in Stout, Colorado who took a pretty epic photo of a deer coming to hang out at the store where she works.
If you missed it, here’s the gist: a deer came into Horsetooth Inn and RV Park near Fort Collins. It looked at some sunglasses. Lori Jones lured it away with a peanut butter bar, and then that deer and a few others came back.
Jones took this photo. Everyone loved it.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Woman takes epic photo after deer waltz into Colorado store
Well, there’s now another chapter to the saga, and you can thank Twitter.
A user named @Mr_DrinksOnMe tweeted those same deer photos (there’s no credit to 9NEWS or Jones, but that’s not the point here). He erroneously claimed they were lured out of the store with chocolate and biscuits.
Can’t see the tweet? Click here: http://bit.ly/2BTUfPw
That’s nonsense, it was a peanut butter bar. But, there’s another part of the post that’s more egregious: he says the deer are gazelle!
Maybe he’s joking. Maybe he’s trolling us. This is the internet, so he probably is trolling us. He probably just wanted retweets.
But this false information has gotten more than 16,000 retweets as of this writing, so as a professional animal photos journalist with an actual college degree, it feels like my job to set the record straight.
There are not gazelle in Colorado. You already knew this (9NEWS has emailed the Denver Zoo to confirm that there aren’t even any gazelles there! We will update this story when we have something concrete to report).
But if you didn’t know this about these mystical creatures, according to Wikipedia, gazelle are mainly found “in the deserts, grasslands and savannas of Africa.” They are also found in southwest and central Asia and the India subcontinent.
Geography aside, here’s what a gazelle looks like:
Here’s what a deer looks like.
Clearly, there is an error here.
Another Twitter user also got some traction from deer photos (again, with no credit to 9NEWS.com or Jones, but that’s still not the point). This one at least calls the pictured animals deer, but again spreads the fake news about the use of chocolate biscuits and chocolate.
Once again, per Jones, it was a peanut butter bar.
Can’t see the tweet? Click here: http://bit.ly/2DidMqO
We’re glad we could set the record straight on these important issues. You may now go about the rest of your day and comment that this isn't news (because it's not).
9NEWS Broncos Outsider and Deer Reporter Allison Sylte can be reached at Allison.sylte@9news.com.
