 |
| Photo
courtesy of City Electric Inc. - A moose hangs from
a power pole near the Pogo Mine on Oct. 5. |
It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's
a bull moose hanging by its antlers from an electrical
power line in the middle of the Alaska wilderness.
In one of those only-in-Alaska stories
that will shock even the sourest of sourdoughs, a trophy-sized
bull moose was accidentally strung up in a power line
under construction to the Teck Pogo gold mine southeast
of Fairbanks. The moose apparently got its antlers tangled
in electrical wire before workers farther down the line
pulled the line tight about two weeks ago.
The moose was suspended 50 feet in the
air when workers, recognizing something was wrong, backtracked
and found it.
The moose was alive when it was lowered
to the ground but was later killed when officials from
the Alaska Department of Fish and Game decided against
tranquilizing it to remove the wires because they were
worried the moose, already stressed, would die and the
meat would not be salvageable as a result of the drugs.
The incident happened Oct. 5 at about
40 Mile Pogo Mine Road, which leads to the gold mine
about 80 miles southeast of Fairbanks.
"It's just an unbelievable story,"
said Gabriel Marian, president of City Electric Inc.,
the contractor erecting the power line to the mine.
"The only unfortunate part is we had to shoot the
moose.
"It would be more of a feel-good
story if we had let it down and it ran off," he
lamented.
The moose reportedly had an antler spread
of 62 inches, a trophy bull by Alaska's big game standards,
though Dave Davenport, a technician for the Alaska Department
of Fish and Game in Delta Junction who handled the original
call on Oct. 5, is still in the process of finding the
antlers, which are state property.
"I haven't seen the antlers,"
said Davenport. "I'm in the process of trying to
get City Electric to turn over the antlers."
The prevailing theory is that the moose
came across the sagging and swaying wires and, in a
testosterone-filled moment, decided to challenge the
power line to a fight, as bull moose are known to do
during the rut, or mating season.
"My guess is he was in full rut
and probably seen that line moving out there,"
and decided to fight, said Marvin Pickens, line construction
manager for City Electric in Anchorage.
Workers didn't know the moose was tangled
in the line until they tightened it and detected a problem.
"There was nobody there to observe
this happen," said Marian, noting that workers
were much farther up the line when they tightened it.
Crews can lay up to five miles of line
at a time before tightening it with a giant hydraulic
winch, said Pickens. It's similar to stringing fishing
line through the eyes of a fishing pole, he said. The
line is pulled through leaders on the crossties at the
top of the power poles and then winched tight with as
much as 5,000 pounds of pressure, he said.
"As you're pulling, it constantly
droops up and down," said Pickens. "My guess
is that he was right in the middle of one of the sections
when it got pulled up."
The moose, which probably weighed in
the neighborhood of 1,200 pounds, was likely suspended
in the air for only a matter of minutes, said Marian.
"They figured it out right away,"
he said. "It was just kind of hard to pull and
it didn't feel right to them, so they went out and investigated."
The moose actually was tangled in what
is known as static, half-inch cable that is strung up
next to the power lines to serve as a lightning rod,
said Pickens.
"I've been in this state 28 years
and I've never seen anything like that," said Pickens.
"City Electric has been in business for 52 years
and never had an incident like this.
"I can't see how it could happen
but it happened," he said.
A pair of photos showing the moose hanging
by its antlers began circulating on the Internet on
Thursday. The first time Davenport saw a picture was
Friday.
"Nobody told me he was hanging
50 feet in the air," said a surprised Davenport.
"That's one heck of a meat pole,"
he quipped. "No bear is going to get that moose."
State wildlife biologist Tom Seaton
thought it was a hoax when he first saw the photos.
"If you believe in UFOs you might
believe in this," Seaton said on Thursday.
After being told the photo was authentic
on Friday, Seaton was still skeptical. "I still
find it hard to believe," he said.
Fish and Game information officer Cathie
Harms' first thought when she saw the picture on Thursday
was that it was computer-enhanced.
"I thought somebody did a Photoshop
thing," said Harms.
When she found out it was real, Harms
still had a hard time fathoming it.
"Absolutely bizarre," she
said. "It's unbelievable the combination of factors
that came together for this to happen. That moose was
just in the wrong place at the wrong time."
It's not uncommon for bull moose to
challenge inanimate objects to a battle during the rut
when testosterone has taken over. Most Alaskans have
seen pictures of bull moose with swing sets, tire swings,
lawn chairs and Christmas lights tangled in their antlers
at this time of year, said Davenport.
"We've had them running down the
main streets of Delta with shirts and pants hanging
from their antlers after they get caught up in clotheslines,"
he said.
Likewise, both Davenport and Harms have
seen moose that died after getting tangled up in old
telegraph wire that is strung through the woods.
Karl Hanneman, manager of public and
environmental affairs for Teck-Pogo, called Davenport
with the news. Hanneman had gotten a call from City
Electric on Oct. 5 informing him "they had a problem"
and he called both Fish and Game and the Alaska Bureau
of Wildlife Enforcement in Delta Junction.
Davenport talked to Hanneman about two
hours later and made the decision to have City Electric
workers shoot the moose, based on reports he got about
the animal's condition.
"It was in pretty rough shape in
talking to them," said Davenport. Tranquilizing
an animal at that point can be deadly, he said.
"If they're really wore down, they'll
succumb to (the drugs) and die," Davenport said.
"Then you can't salvage the meat because of the
drugs in it."
The meat was salvaged and donated to
a local resident, he said.
City Electric workers did everything
they could do to try and free the moose once it was
lowered to the ground, but that proved impossible, said
Marian, the company president. The moose was thrashing
about trying to free itself, posing a threat to anyone
who got near.
"They did their best to untangle
it, but there wasn't any possibility of doing that,"
he said.
It remains to be seen how quickly the
photos will spread on the Internet but there's little
doubt they will be a big hit, ADF&G's Harms said.
"It's going to go nuts," she
said.
Now that the news is out and photos
have hit the Internet, Marian is worried animal rights
groups will get involved.
"There's going to be people who
figure we've done something wrong," he said. "There's
no way we would ever have done this on purpose.
"This was a phenomenal surprise
to everybody," Marian said. |
