For Good Of All, Don’t Give Food To Wild Animals

Stray moose are fairly common news in this region. But Sarah Conover was dealing with a different animal.

Not a stray moose, but rather a moose that had been led astray.

On Friday, Conover was at the Sno-Park area of Mount Spokane State Park scouting sites to build a snow cave for the amusement of young skiers coming to the mountain the next day.

“This moose was walking around the cross-country ski trails checking people out,” she said. “Everyone thought it was kind of funny. It came up and sniffed me and I just said, ‘Nice moosey,’ and went on.

“That’s when the moose started getting ornery.”

A few people had been sharing their lunches with the moose. Conover wasn’t about to offer food even if she had it. The moose apparently was pretty steamed.

“I wasn’t the only one who didn’t offer it food, but it seemed to single me out like it had it in for me or something,” she said.

She turned for the Selkirk Lodge, the warming shelter used by cross-country skiers. The moose trailed right behind her.

“It was right on my heels and making me nervous,” she said, “so I turned around and said, ‘Shoo!’ That just seemed to make it more angry.”

Indeed, the moose reared up on its hind legs and pawed menacingly and dangerously with its front hooves.

One swipe nicked Conover on the arm.

Some people, including a state park ranger, were watching and thinking this was humorous to that point.

“It sure wasn’t funny to me,” Conover said. “You learn to tell a horse’s attitude by looking at its ears. When they lay down flat, you’re in trouble. Well, this moose was deranged. It was thinking something different every minute because its ears were going one way and then another all the time.”

Conover scurried into the Selkirk Lodge while the moose stood guard outside the door.

“My friend, Charlie, could walk out the door and the moose wouldn’t pay attention to him,” she said. “But when I tried to come out, the moose would come after me.”

“He just stood out there looking in, like he had a beam on me. He wouldn’t let me out.”

This could have been a story about beauty and the beast. But when the park ranger distracted the moose, Conover sneaked to the ranger’s pickup.

“I was a little put out that he wasn’t warning the other skiers,” she said. “I told him that 180 kids were coming to the mountain on Saturday and this moose was dangerous.

“The ranger said I was on the moose’s terrain. Normally, I would agree, but this wasn’t a normal moose.”

As she predicted, the moose was at the ski trails pestering skiers on Saturday morning. Rangers called the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department. Biologist Woody Myers responded, tranquilized the moose and hauled it away around 11 a.m.

Unfortunately, Mount Spokane isn’t where the story began or where it ended.

This was not the Fish and Wildlife Department’s first encounter with the moose, nor was it the moose’s first encounter with people.

Moocher, if you’ll permit me to give the female calf a name, was born this spring near Newman Lake. Its mother apparently was struck by a car and killed on a highway in late November, said department spokeswoman Madonna Luers.

Wildlife agent John McColgin went to the area several times to look for the calf, but never caught up with it, she said.

Soon, however, the calf started showing up in rural yards. People began feeding it goodies, even though it was old enough to fend for itself. Some people bragged it would eat out of their hands.

The moose had become Moocher. “If you didn’t have a carrot or something, the moose got mad,” Luers said.

Department biologists responded to complaints just after Christmas. They tranquilized the moose in an orchard and moved it out of the valley and into mountains near Mount Spokane, where it kept a fairly low profile until last week.

Moocher probably followed packed snowmobile trails to the familiar scent of people and Cheetos at the cross-country ski trails.

“The moose is seven months old and 300 pounds,” Luers said. “It’s fully capable of taking care of itself if it would start acting like a moose and not a pet.”

Moocher was hauled farther north Saturday and released up a gated road on Boise Cascade timberland in Stevens County.

“This is one of those sad cases of good-intentioned people conditioning a wild animal into a troublemaker,” Luers said.

The future isn’t bright for Moocher unless it quickly develops a palate for willows and other normal moose delicacies.

As for Conover, she had learned the perils of mooching wildlife years ago during a visit to Rocky Mountain National Park.

The marmots people were feeding at the viewpoint looked cute, she said, “until one of them grabbed my friend’s sweater and dragged it down a hole and out of sight. In a second, it was gone.”

And just as quickly, Conover was a believer in the proven rule that feeding wild animals eventually causes heartburn.

, DataTimes MEMO: You can contact Rich Landers by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5508.

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