Moose Wanders Into Portland
Posted by: Loren Coleman on May 26th, 2009
A moose that wandered into Portland, Maine, over the Memorial Day weekend was shot and killed by police after attempts to bring it down with a tranquilizer gun proved unsuccessful.
Portland police shot a female (above) moose in Deering Oaks Park Sunday, May 24, 2009, after 6 hours of chasing the animal, in and around Baxter Woods.
The moose was first spotted on Forest Avenue around 6:30 Sunday morning.
It was cornered near Catherine Mccauley High School, and wildlife biologists with the Maine Warden Service were called in to sedate the animal.
After four unsuccessful attempts at tranquilizing the moose, police weighed their options.
Police said the moose was then 500 feet from the parking lot of Deering Pavilion Retirement Center and was a danger to the public.
It was then that they decided to kill the moose with a rifle.
Officials said they were forced to kill the animal when it headed toward busy Forest Avenue.
Meanwhile, also on May 24th, a little farther north in Maine, another moose incident occurred.
A sick and injured moose was euthanized in Thompson Lake late Sunday afternoon after swimming arround boats, Maine Game Warden Joshua Smith said.
“I received a complaint from Oxford Police Department after they had received a number of calls about a moose in the lake,” Smith said. “It had spent a significant time in the water swimming around.”
Smith said one of the animal’s hind legs appeared to be broken, and it also showed signs of brain worm. At nearly 300 pounds, the small bull was emaciated, had very little fur and its ears were back on its head – all signs of brain worm, the warden said.
Making the situation difficult was the location of the moose, which stood in a few feet of water near a sandy beach area next to The Outpost store on the west shore of the lake.
Store owner Donna DeSalvo said she’d seen the moose around over the last few months and could tell it was injured. She said she got a call from someone out on the lake that a moose was swimming around between boats.
“I was in and out because I was working, but there are a lot of people who don’t live here year-round, it was the first time they’d seen a moose,” DeSalvo said.
During the nearly two-hour incident, people came and went, some taking pictures, witnesses said.
Bill Kennedy, who recently moved to Otisfield from New Jersey, said he received a call from his wife that he needed to get home because there was a moose in the water near The Outpost next door. From his deck he said he could see the gathering crowd, and watched the wardens tow the moose to the nearby public boat landing after it had been shot.
A crowd of people gathered, and boats continued to congregate nearby, Smith said. Each time a group was asked to disperse, a new group would take its place, making the situation dangerous, he said.
Smith said that after the animal was shot, he and off-duty warden Tony Gray towed it to the boat landing, removed it from the water and took it away for disposal.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
