Potato chips, cheese curls, and candy may be some of your favorites, but for twenty-four mule deer in the Grand Canyon National Park, these indulgences proved deadly. Park rangers were forced to shoot more than two dozen mule deer who became hooked on junk food left by visitors. It was death by Cheetos and suicide by Snicker bar! Why eat twigs or chew bark if a Twinkie is nearby? Once deer taste the sugar and salt of snack foods, they develop an addiction and will go to any lengths to eat only junk food. They ignore the food they need, leaving them in bad health and edging towards starvation. With these cravings, deer even lose their natural ability to digest vegetation. One ranger calls junk food “the crack cocaine of the deer world.”1

7:00am most mornings finds me at the hospital for a …