A baby moose in Alaska was saved from what police described as its “sure demise” after it fell into a lake and became wedged between a floatplane and a dock last week.
Spencer Warren, who works for Destination Alaska Adventure Co., heard a noise that he initially believed belonged to a bird when he arrived to work at Beluga Lake in Homer around 6:30 a.m. on Friday, the Associated Press reported.
When heading out to the dock to prepare a floatplane for a trip that day, he noticed the noise wasn’t coming from a bird, but a moose calf that was stuck between the floats of the plane and the dock.
Warren told the outlet his first thought was, “Oh, man, where is mama? I know she’s nearby.”
Sure enough, the mother, who was with another calf, was about 4 feet away from the trapped calf and was keeping Warren from getting any closer to her struggling baby.
The young moose kept attempting to get out of the lake, but its hooves couldn’t catch a grip on top of the metal floats, which replace the wheels on a plane and allow it to take off and land on water.
“It’s like an ice rink for the moose and its hooves,” Warren said when describing Friday’s rescue. “So he just kept slipping and slipping and could not get up.”
Warren said he then contacted his boss, who called the Homer Police Department for assistance.
When officers arrived at the dock, one used his police cruiser to block off the mama moose while another officer and Warren began pulling the calf from the water, according to Homer police Lt. Ryan Browning.
Though one of the calf’s legs was stuck across the top of the plane’s float, the rescuers were still able to pull the moose safely from the water.
“You know, kind of thankfully, he wasn’t moving so that it made the rescue a little bit easier,” Warren said. “We just lifted him straight out and, put him on the dock there.”
An officer helped the calf stand up on the boardwalk and watched it reunite with its mother.
“Anytime you can rescue a little critter, it always makes you feel good,” Browning told The AP.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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