[Vision2020] House Guest a Bit Wild

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (January 10, 2009) Spokesman Review -

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Moose crashes into North Spokane basement bedroom
Moose leaves mess, and dragging it up stairs a chore

By Rich Landers, Outdoors editor

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A 375-pound moose calf that crashed through a window into the basement 
bedroom of a north Spokane home near Franklin Park looks at Washington 
Fish and Wildlife Department officers Thursday, Jan. 8, 2009, as they 
prepare to tranquilize and remove the animal.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/SpokaneMoose

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A north Spokane couple that’s expecting a baby got an early arrival 
Thursday evening when a moose calf dropped into a bedroom through a 
basement window.

Tony Mantese reported the moose-entry incident around 4:30 p.m. from his 
home on Stevens Street just north of Francis Avenue. The moose apparently 
had been taking advantage of the shallower snow around the neighborhood 
buildings when it fell into a deep window well. As is struggled to get out 
and rejoin its mother and sibling, it kicked through the window and fell 
into the house.

“I got the call around 6 p.m. that there was a moose in somebody’s 
basement,” said Woody Myers, a Washington Fish and Wildlife Department 
biologist trained to tranquilize big-game animals. “I said ‘You’re 
kidding’ and the officer quite sternly said, ‘No I’m not.’ ”

Myers, a 32-year veteran with the wildlife agency, is the region’s go-to-
man for tranquilizing moose and other big game. He said this is a first. 

“I’ve had episodes that appeared on Animal Planet, including the moose we 
darted at Five Mile Shopping Center that tried to run up over a fence, but 
fell back and plopped — and stayed— on the top of a car as the drug took 
full effect.”

In this case, the moose was confined to the bedroom and took its medicine 
quietly.

“It just flinched (when the dart was shot into its rump) and walked around 
for a few minutes before lying down,” Myers said. “It went very smoothly.

“Five of us used a tarp to take the calf up a narrow stairway. It weighs 
about 375 pounds, but there wasn’t really room there for a 375-pound moose 
and four men, so we just had to heave-and-ho a foot at a time.

“Then we had to take it through the kitchen and load it into a pickup.”

The work wasn’t over after the moose was trucked away.

“There was quite a mess in the bedroom,” Myers said, noting that the moose 
had relieved itself liberally. “I felt sorry for the family. They had done 
a nice job of finishing the room.”

The calf was taken to veterinarian Luther McConnell’s wildlife 
rehabilitation quarters off the Newport Highway and kept overnight.

“I didn’t think it would survive in these winter conditions if we just 
took it out and released it that night,” Myers said.

This morning, agency officers tracked down and tranquilized the free-
roaming mother and sibling, reunited them with the break-in calf and 
trucked them out near Mount Spokane for release.

A moose breaking into a basement bedroom was just the latest among the 
region’s weird wildlife encounter related to recent winter conditions.

•On Tuesday, six wild elk perished after they had taken refuge from deep 
snow and a storm under an old hay storage barn that collapsed under the 
weight of snow.

•A moose that fell through the ice at Priest Lake was rescued by a group 
of residents sliding boats onto the ice, dropping a rope around its neck 
and hauling it out. Deer have been reported breaking through the ice at 
Lake Coeur d’Alene.

•The number of moose, deer and elk being killed in collisions on railways 
and roads appears to be soaring, area wildlife biologists say. 

“Tough winters will force wildlife into places where we don’t normally 
seem them,” said Chip Corsi, Idaho Fish and Game Department Panhandle 
Region manager.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
"For a lapse Lutheran born-again Buddhist pan-Humanist Universalist 
Unitarian Wiccan Agnostic like myself there's really no reason ever to go 
to work."

- Roy Zimmerman


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