For a Saskatchewan tow truck driver with work still to be done last Saturday, it was immediately clear what took priority.
The frozen moose trapped in the ice of a lake came first, and Clint Gottinger, owner of Rebel Towing, told his clients like it was.
“After they heard I was digging a moose out of the ice they said ‘Oh okay that’s fine.’ They were very understanding.”
Gottinger was on his way to two separate tow calls when around 5 pm about half a mile from his house, he spotted a young moose frozen in the ice.
“I can’t leave him,” Gottinger remembered thinking. “Everyone has to wait. This is a priority.”
He figured he could back the truck up towards the moose, lower the bed, and use the winch to help him get out. The moose was clearly too exhausted to think much about his strange, loud, smelly rescue vehicle, nor the soft sling that was lassoed over his backend.
“We got the sling around his butt and popped him right out and then onto the deck,” Gottinger said, narrating his story to CBC News. Some neighbors came by to help, and they told him that they’d seen the moose there since about 8:45 o’clock that morning. It was half-past 5 when they got him on the truck bed.
Heading home, Gottinger called his wife with the news: “honey get some blankets, I’ve got a moose.”
Back at their home in Kelvington, they plopped the moose down on a large blanket and put another one overtop of him. The animal was still too tired to resist the blankets, or its rescuer’s scratches behind the ear.
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By 11 pm, the moose was back on its feet, and in no mood for any more of Gottinger’s scratches. He lingered around the property until late morning the following day, when he finally headed off; behavior that one biologist said was normal for moose that have had to be rescued by humans.
They can suffer something called “capture myopathy” which is a state of overwhelming stress and confusion that can lead to metabolic issues and even organ failure, but the biologist said this wasn’t likely to be the case based on what Gottinger had observed.
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It’s likely the animal went to look for some deep shelter like an aspen or fir grove to bed down in and recovery.
As for the tow bill, Gottinger said he named the moose Rebel and spray painted Rebel Towing on its side.
“That’s a joke,” he said.
WATCH the unlikely moose hero below…
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