Red Deer’s Dorothy Zohner was chatting on the phone when she spotted a moose walking on her front lawn.
“I happened to look out the window and there was RCMP parked across the street,”
said Zohner. “I wondered if they were coming to our house, but then I looked and saw this brown thing by my front steps. Then it moved.
“That’s when I realized it’s a moose.”
Zohner and her husband Wilf have lived at their home on Nordegg Crescent in Normandeau since 1991. This isn’t the first time they’ve seen wildlife in their yard.
“We’ve had deer and elk – we haven’t seen the elk, but they left us their calling card,” she said, adding a moose was spotted in the neighbourhood a couple years ago.
“We’ve been watching the moose – there’s nothing else to do but watch wildlife,” she said.
Others in Normandeau seem to feel the same way. Zohner said there were a few people who stopped to look at the moose on Tuesday afternoon.
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Stuart Turner, the Zohners’ next door neighbour, said he could tell the moose was hurt.
“I knew it was injured somehow, but it doesn’t look like it was hit by a vehicle. When they’re injured, you never know (what they’ll do),” said Turner.
Turner has lived on Nordegg Crescent since 2000. He said a nearby school had to cancel classes for a day a couple years ago because an aggressive mother moose was spotted with its two young children.
“At 12:45 he was standing right beside my car on the driveway,” Turner said. “Then he went to lay on the grass, then he went to the neighbours and started chewing at their little shrub.”
Chris Kelly, Central region Fish and Wildlife Enforcement officer, said there is no plan to remove the moose from the area.
“It hasn’t been a public safety issue,” Kelly said. “If it becomes aggressive we’ll have to do what we have to do … but moose are here and live in the city. A moose in the city is what it is.”
Kelly said people should not approach moose. Normally moose are not aggressive but when a moose is stressed, it can be easily provoked, according to Alberta Environment and Parks.
sean.mcintosh@reddeeradvocate.com
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