THE Ochils Mountain Rescue team delighted locals on Christmas Eve with a jokey Facebook post about a red-nosed reindeer injured on the hills.

Apparently, just before 6pm on December 24, team members were called out to a reindeer that broken its leg while checking youngsters in Stirling and Clacks were getting ready for bed.

The post went on: "While team doctors treated the casualty’s injury other team members assisted the other seven members of the party and spoke to their leader who was well equipped for the cold conditions in a warm red suit.

"Unfortunately this reindeer was the only one in the group who could navigate and had any form of light in the form of a bright red nose.

"While his injury wasn’t too bad he couldn’t continue to lead the sleigh.

"As the party were on a very important journey tonight our team leader decided that team search dog Evie was to be deployed to assist the party to continue their journey.

"Team members were safely off the hill by 19:20 apart from Evie who’s team GPS confirms her location as somewhere over Australia."

The festive post went down well on social media, receiving 2,000 likes and over 800 shares on Facebook.

Ross MacIntyre, the group's secretary who wrote the post, told the Advertiser: "We have quite a lot of supporters who are following us on social media, so I thought I'd post something silly to engage with people at Christmas.

"I did something similar the year before but it didn't go down as well as that.

"I didn't realise how many people would like it - I never thought it would be so popular."

When asked if anyone had fallen for the post, he laughed and said: "I hope not."