A moose on the loose caused a lot of commotion in a popular Fredericton park Thursday morning.
Police were warning people not to get too close to the moose and to try to keep the noise down, as it took a leisurely stroll through Wilmot Park.
"Normally we're a little more boisterous than we were this morning, so they came by and asked us to be very quiet, so we obliged," said lawn bowler Pat Beggs.
Officials with the Department of Natural Resources had to administer two doses of a tranquilizer drug before the animal could be safely loaded onto a truck and removed from the park.
The ordeal lasted several hours and provided some excitement for onlookers, including a group of people who were lawn bowling in the park.
“It was kind of crazy because there was police driving all over the park and people with what looked like rifles, but they were obviously stun darts, that they were trying to slow the moose down with,” said Beggs. “They’d get close and … she would take off and they’d miss her.”
City forester, Mike Glynn, says calls are common this time of year for deer and bears, but rarely do they receive calls about moose.
“We don’t get a lot of calls related to moose sightings in the city,” said Glynn.
“The bugs this year, it’s a particularly bad year with flies, mosquitos, black flies, that sort of thing,” said Glynn. “So, sometimes they’ll come into the city just for some refuge away from the wooded areas where the flies are the worst.”
As for the moose, she rested until the sedation wore off -- watched closely by DNR officers -- and was relocated to a safe, wooded area.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Laura Brown
