Three of the park’s four European elk, known as moose in North America, became so stressed during the inauguration festivities that they died later that night, according to local media reports.
The incident took place after one of the elk became stressed for an unknown reason and began to run around wildly. Zoologist Clas Sandberg called the episode a case of “extremely bad luck” and maintains that there aren’t any shortcomings at Virum Elk Park which affected the chain of events.
“They’ve simply been stricken by very unfortunate circumstances,” he said to the Vimmerby Tidning newspaper.