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Dear Johnnie: There is a lone female elk in a fenced-in field on U.S. 287 and Oxford Road. At first, I thought she may have wandered too far from her herd, but now I think she may be being kept as livestock/pet.

Are there any regulations against this in Boulder County?

Elk are herd animals, and I just feel bad for this lone female. She hangs out on the fence line all the time, following the sheep and cows on the other side of the fence. It just doesn't seem right. She should be with a heard in a large free roaming area, not stuck by herself in a small fenced-in field next to a highway.

I have tried to contact various divisions of Colorado Parks and Wildlife. I have been told they have heard of the elk, but they keep passing me around to different offices to call, with no answers. Is there anything that can be done to get this elk back in a natural habitat? — LB

Dear LB: The thing to do is let nature take its course, and I mean that literally.

When I went out to take a look for myself, I couldn't find the elk (so thank you for the photo). I saw cows, I saw a small farm plot with pigs and sheep, but I saw no elk. I also saw a fence around the pasture that is not the kind of fence you'd see around a ranch that keeps elk as part of a herd. Elk fences can be 8 feet tall. But this fence couldn't keep an elk in.

It can't keep one out, either.

"She's not a captive, she's not in someone's fence," Dave Hoerath, wildlife biologist for Boulder County, said of the elk, which he described as "a minor celebrity."

Hoerath said the elk first arrived in that field in late January.

"She came from the Heil Valley Ranch herd some months ago," he said. "They just kind of incrementally went farther and farther east. She is, as far as I know, the only one who crossed 287."

Hoerath said he's confident that this elk is from Heil because county wildlife officials tracked a radio-collared elk from that herd as far as the south side of Lagerman Reservoir, which is about halfway between Heil and the Ertl property at Oxford and 287.

"It's not that hard (to get there) if you wander along Left Hand Creek — which is probably what she did — and some very open farm fields," he said, although he added that there was one elk from the herd that was struck by a vehicle on the Diagonal Highway in November.

He said that state wildlife officials are not interested in trying to dart, tag or move the Ertl elk.

I couldn't reach anyone at the Division of Wildlife, but I did hear back from state veterinarian Keith Roehr, who works for the Department of Agriculture, based in Broomfield.

Roehr confirmed that it is illegal to keep any elk from a wild herd; "they belong to the state." However, he said that a rancher may keep domesticated elk if he gets an alternative livestock license from the state's ag department. The other exemption is for those who hold a "commercial parks license" with Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

No law, however, prohibits a wild elk from wandering onto someone's ranch, or staying there if she wants.

"They have a herding instinct," Roehr said, "so it's not uncommon for them to get some sense of security by being around other livestock animals."

But Hoerath's hopeful that the elk — I'll call her Myrtle — will make it back home.

"Everyone's hoping that as spring rolls around that she may try to migrate back to the foothills to have a calf, if she was bred," Hoerath said. "If she wandered to Ertl at some point, then she can un-wander at another point."

Send questions to johnnie@times-call.com.