So this moose walks into a medical building…
While it might be a bad joke, it actually happened in Anchorage on Thursday.
In the lobby of a medical building at the Alaska Health Park in Providence, a young moose was wading through the snow in search of food and decided to stop by to check out the greenery when he spotted the greenery.
Randy Hughes, the hospital’s security director, said the clever — or lucky — moose triggered sensors on automatic doors in the building that houses the hospital’s cancer center and other medical offices.
“We got a call from a tenant saying a moose had just walked into the building,” Hughes said.
Hughes believes this is the same moose that has been roaming the campus. Although moose are common in Alaska, their presence is announced over the intercom for safety reasons.
“But it seemed to attract people to see it,” he said. “It’s not every day you see a moose walking into a building, so everyone’s excited to take pictures and things like that.”
In a video posted on social media, a woman wearing a face mask and coveralls can be heard saying “this is crazy” as she walks past the moose and snaps pictures on her phone.
The moose was too preoccupied with eating the office plants to notice the commotion he was causing.
Security guards surrounded the moose in a semicircle and drove it out the door. One officer even grabbed a piece of plant that the moose had been eating and tried to lure it out.
“In the end, I think everybody was looking at him, watching him eat,” Hughes said.
The moose left the building but wandered the building’s semi-circular driveway for a while before heading to the other side of the building to sleep for the afternoon.
This isn’t the first time a moose has entered one of the hospital complexes, the bear has tried to enter the emergency room before.
“There’s never a dull moment in the hospital,” Hughes said.
—Mark Thiessen, Associated Press
alaska wildlife