A crash and a splash pulled a North Bay, Ontario, family out of bed around 4 a.m. on Saturday. When Kurt and Abby Blaszczyk looked outside, they were greeted with a massive animal swimming laps in the deep end of their backyard pool. It was a moose. Shockingly, a young one had broken through part of their fence, wandered into the yard, and ended up in the water.
The moose could swim, but the steep sides and slick liner gave it nothing to climb out on. So it circled the deep end and tried, and failed, to haul itself over the edge. Kurt Blaszczyk summed the morning up the way only a Canadian might, calling it “a very uniquely Canadian way to have your pool destroyed.”
Blaszczyk coaxed the moose toward the shallow end of the pool, walking the fence line and turning on his pool shed light to steer it. It found its way out, but eventually got turned around and fell back in a second time. It climbed out again, panicked, and eventually lay down behind a golf net in the yard to rest. Then it broke through another stretch of fence and dropped straight into the neighbor’s pool. (Pool: 2; Moose: 0 at this point.
By then, the family had called the Ministry of Natural Resources for help, because what else was there to do at that point? Meanwhile, the moose kept getting tangled in a solar pool cover that several people had to free her from. Officers eventually sedated her, and she stood in the neighbor’s shallower pool for close to an hour before slipping out through a gate. She wandered the streets, paused at a nearby ski hill, and was gone by the next morning. And thus, she was free from the potential “captivity” of two different pools after a long night.
How a Moose Winds Up in a Pool
In northern Ontario, a moose in the neighborhood is unusual but not unheard of. This particular animal was a yearling as well. Around this time of year, mother moose drive their year-old calves off to make way for new ones, and those young moose go wandering, often into unfamiliar ground, sometimes right into a town.
A disoriented moose in a backyard is bad enough. A moose in a backyard pool is worse. Moose are decent enough swimmers in a lake, but a pool is a different problem. The sides are steep and smooth, the liner has no grip, and the deep end gives a panicking animal nowhere to stand. What looks like a refuge is a hole it can’t climb out of. Add the fences, the fright, and hours of exhaustion, and it’s easy to see how one moose ended up in two pools before the night was over.
What to Do When Wildlife Ends Up in Your Yard
The Blaszczyks handled it about as well as anyone could. They did not try to wrestle a several-hundred-pound animal or push it around. They kept their distance, used light and patience to nudge it toward an exit, and called in the professionals. That restraint is the important part, because a frightened moose is dangerous.
When an animal is this stuck or this stressed, the job belongs to people trained and equipped for it. The Ministry of Natural Resources assessed the moose, brought in the fire department in case she had to be lifted, and sedated her when she would not settle. Even then, it took a couple of tries and most of a day to get her free.
Wildlife in the yard is a fact of life in the north, as the Blaszczyks know. But they don’t have to be affected by the constraints of human life, and you can help get them back to normal if the time does come.