This happened a while ago (spring of 2012), but I was just looking at some photos and thought of this again and thought I'd post it to share it to a wider audience. It's the story of a moose that got trapped in a fiber pond in Ontario. The notes below are taken from the email that I received about it:
Sunday April 15, 2012 dawned cloudy and cool in the
little community of Terrace Bay, located along the north shore of Lake Superior.
My friend and fellow
Conservation Officer Jeff Anderson stopped by the house, my wife Eleanor made
fresh coffee and we were enjoying a day off now that the fishing season for walleye had
finally closed.
When the phone rang that morning, it
was to alert us that a moose was helplessly mired in a spillway next to the
towns pulp mill. Normally, the hustle and bustle of a busy factory would
discourage wildlife from getting too close, but in this case, the mill had been
idle for quite some time and the mill yard was quiet and tranquil.
The large man-made ponds that surround
the property are part of a system used to treat waste water. They are all
fenced except for the one closest to the buildings. Its unclear as to how the
young adult bull wandered into the first one, maybe he was fleeing a vehicle on
the nearby road, or perhaps he just thought it was a marsh. Whatever the
reason, he attempted to cross the football-field sized settling pond and began
breaking through the deep layers of sodden wood fiber.
We quickly hatched a plan and began gathering some
rope, hip waders and snowshoes while Jeff grabbed a patrol truck, uniform and
shotgun. It was important to be prepared for any eventuality! When we all rendezvoused
at the site, we were faced with the saddest looking animal you could imagine. Utilizing the snowshoes to
stay on top of the layers of fiber, we were able to approach the bull, fasten a chain knot
around his neck and attempt to pull him free utilizing the winch on Jeff’s
patrol truck. Unfortunately, we could not pull him horizontally with sufficient
force to drag him out without the risk of injuring him, so we needed a new
approach.
Mill staff came to the rescue and
arrived on scene with a large, tracked loader equipped with a boom grapple. The
rest of us shovelled a space around the moose’s chest around which we were able
to secure a heavy line. With this new ability to lift and pull from around the
animals girth, the big bull was slowly drawn out of the muck and
onto the bank.
It appeared as though he had been there
overnight and he was near death from exhaustion and stress. Remarkably, by supporting him in a prone
position, giving him a couple bottles of water to drink and rubbing his legs to
restore circulation, he began to perk up! After 20 minutes and several attempts, he stood up
on wobbly legs for the first time in many hours. He tolerated us as we held him
up and later, as he began walking with our assistance. It was a very strange experience to calmly accompany
him for the long walk around the ponds perimeter, but we all felt the same heart-warming
feeling when he quietly stepped into the bush under his own power, and
disappeared from sight.
Terrace Bay is a town on the north shore of Lake Superior in Ontario, Canada
about 150km East of Thunder Bay.
This was written by Paul Dennis, Conservation
Officer, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.
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