Bullwinkle is in town . . . Anchorage Alaska

Winter is coming in Anchorage.

Another strange sight around town for tourists and first year residents of Anchorage Alaska was spotted this past weekend. The mountains around town are white with snow of the upcoming winter so the moose have started moving into lower elevations and easier walking terrain. It is an annual occurrence as the thousand plus moose population come back and occupies the city with the humans and other animals.

One large Bull Moose was spotted on Saturday downtown in Town Square Park and surprised several visitors later outside the Captain Cook Hotel. He was having a great time eating on the trees downtown and easily walking the streets since we are lacking our normal snowfall this time of year.

I drove downtown several times over the last few days and spotted him either walking or eating within a several block area. He was happy to be there and spent time lazily hanging out watching those that were watching him. This moose has become something of a seasonal celebrity, making the television news on several channels after he spent the weekend clumping along the avenues with his big rack, thrilling the holiday shopping throngs and the few remaining tourists.

Yesterday he made his way back to town square for a little Christmas cheer and found himself part of the Holiday decorations. It started when he stopped to nibble the trees in Town Square Park, which had recently been strung with expensive LED Christmas lights and part of the annual “City of Lights” program. They snagged in his antlers, and he seemed roped to a tree for a while prompting calls to our beloved Rick Sinnott, a Fish and Game biologist who responds to the many Moose and Bear sightings in Anchorage.

After some effort, the moose freed himself, but took the light string with him, dragging it through traffic.

Sinnott sees snagged moose all the time -- Christmas lights, hammocks, swing sets. Usually the animal will pull itself free, though occasionally, for bad snarls, it will have to be drugged and untangled by biologists. Those tangled moose get tagged. This moose has such a tag, which means he's a repeat offender. He’s a fun lover looking in all the wrong places.

After his great show for onlookers in Town Square Park, the moose ambled down the street and squeezed into the courtyard at Bernie's Bungalow Tavern where he settled in for a feast of crab apples and eventually assumed a disoriented stance, staring into space and snorting steam. What was on his moose mind? Was he dreaming of chewing spring buds or sleeping in the tall summer grass? Was he filled with crab-appletini regret?

You can't do much for a drunken moose except wait for him to sober up, Sinnott said. And he's in a pretty good place -- among Bernie's fountains and yard sculptures, behind a hedge, safe from passing traffic. Even Sinnott couldn't resist the pull of a bad moose one-liner. "These country moose can't always hold their liquor," he said.

So . . . What do you call a bull moose tangled in Christmas lights and drunk on fermented crab apples, standing glassy-eyed and dizzy in the front yard of a downtown bar?

Buzzwinkle?

But seriously, the juiced moose had certainly seen better days than Tuesday. That goofy look on his face and time spent waiting to gain his wits about him probably was one of those life lessons learnt the hard way.

It’s hard sometimes being a city moose . . . If you don’t believe it . . . just ask this one in front of Starbuck’s on 5^th Avenue.

Ice

*First two pictures by Eric Hill, ADN