This fall, forty-eight hours before hunting season started, a moose escaped from a Haines wildlife center. But, two days before Christmas, he returned back to the center unharmed.

 

 

Two days before this fall’s moose hunting season opener, the beloved bull moose of the Kroschel Wildlife Center on Mosquito Lake Road in Haines escaped.  Duck Moses was his name. Steve Kroschel who runs the center named him.

Kroschel:  “Duck is from, is named after Duck Hess who helped me get it here from Anchorage…  Moses is because he is just kind of a charismatic megafauna..”

Duck Moses was an orphan from Anchorage.  And he was a legal bull moose.

Kroschel called Fish and Game to tell them about the disappearance of his adored ungulate.  Fish and Game wanted to make sure the moose steaks would be edible.  

Kroschel: “So that was the concern of the state and they said, “Well what kind of drugs have you been giving it?”  And I thought, you know, What the heck would they want to know that for?”

Livestock are not allowed to be slaughtered for a period of time after receiving certain medications. This allows the drugs time to flush out of their system.

This December, nearly two months after his disappearance, the moose returned to the wildlife center on his own accord.   He walked straight to his horse trailer.  Duck Moses was safely home for the holidays.  This story has a happy ending for Duck Moses and his admirers.

Moose are a main attraction at the center which offers close encounters with 15 wildlife species.  Kroschel admits that he spoils his moose.  Duck Moses was raised on a bottle and Kroschel feeds him bananas.  Visitors love giving him hugs..

During the hunting season, there was no sign of Duck Moses.  Hunters in the area had caught wind of his disappearance.  Inevitably, hunters imaginations went where hunters’ imaginations are prone to go.  Some teased that they were going to hang bananas from their tree branches to lure him within shooting distance.  Of course, Kroschel was concerned.  Duck Moses was not afraid of humans.  He is known at the center for being quite a socialite.  

Kroschel: “It was bottle raised so it comes up from the swamp and it greets people.  And they just put their arms around it and give it fireweed and willow leaves.  And I don’t know, people just drool over a moose.”

On December 23rd, Kroschel’s fears were allayed.  He was drinking his coffee when he looked outside his window and spotted a moose walking up the trail.He called to it.

Kroschel: “I opened the kitchen window and I went “MAH MAH MAH” and, you know, I sounded ridiculous.  But the moose stopped.”  

He suspected it was Duck Moses but wasn’t sure.  It took him a few minutes as he navigated over hills, around buildings and through bushes to get to the spot where he last saw the moose.  When he arrived, the moose hadn’t run away, and that’s when he knew that it was Duck Moses, home at last, just in time for Christmas.  Kroschel improvised.  He grabbed two frozen apples figuring that was the best he could do in the moment to persuade the errant animal back to its enclosure.

Kroschel:  “It just walked towards me, right up to me like it was Lassie. And I just made sounds with those two frozen apples and this metal pail.  And it walks right over to the gate and over to the swamp. You know its got a big acreage there. And it went right in.”

No one knows where Duck Moses went.  Was he on a bender?  A religious pilgrimage?  All we know is that wherever he went, he made friends.

Kroschel: “Now the following morning when I went out on the trail in the back, two more bull moose came out. And they followed that same trail.  And, you know, he had been hanging out with other bull moose.  And there was one of them that was huge.”

 Kroschel says that the other moose eventually moved on, but not without first looking a little envious of Duck Moses’s idyllic swamp and horse trailer.

You can meet Duck Moses at Kroschel Wildlife Center during tourism season.