With moose in their mating season, or rut, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is reminding Anchorage residents to put away objects in their yards that could tangle up the animals.
There have been a handful of different moose entanglements recently involving Christmas lights, said Cory Stantorf, the Anchorage area biologist. And he said a lot of other items could snare the animals.
“They also start rubbing up against and fighting soccer nets, zip lines, playground sets, electrical cords, you name it,” Stantorf said. "If it's dangling and hanging off, they find themselves in those objects.”
There are roughly 1,600 moose in the Anchorage Bowl. Moose aren’t normally aggressive, but they may be during the rut, which runs through late October. During rut, bulls often thrash their antlers against objects to assert dominance.
The animals are sometimes able to untangle themselves from whatever they’re caught in, but that might endanger humans. For example, if a moose’s antlers are tied up in an electrical cord, it might dangle into their eyes and impair their vision. That increases the likelihood of the animals wandering into roadways and vehicles hitting them, Stantorf said.
Stantorf said if people see an entangled moose, the sooner they call it in, the better.
“These are wild animals, so they've never been restrained in their lives,” he said. “So they fight and fight and fight until they exhaust themselves and die. And there have been several instances where we just weren't notified soon enough to get out and free an animal, and it unfortunately died being entangled.”
The department advises against trying to untangle the animal yourself. If you see an entangled moose in Anchorage, call 311 or your local Fish and Game office.
