“Everyone is concerned about him.”
Earlier this week, people in Red Lodge, Montana, did a double take when they noticed an unexpected visitor inside their local skate park.
He was enormous, had four legs and definitely wasn’t there to skateboard.
An adult bull moose had somehow wandered into Hellroaring Skate Park—and ended up trapped inside the halfpipe.
According to reports, the moose fell into the concrete bowl around 10 a.m. on September 7. Once inside, he quickly discovered that climbing back out was nearly impossible. The steep walls left him with nowhere to go, and the frightened animal spent hours pacing around the bowl.
Moose sightings are fairly common in Red Lodge, a community surrounded by wilderness areas and national parks. But seeing one trapped inside a skate park was certainly unusual.
As the hours passed, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks staff and local police gathered around the skate park and tried to guide the moose toward an exit at the bottom of the halfpipe.
But the exhausted animal wasn’t having any luck.
Residents watched from a safe distance, hoping rescuers could get him out before he became even more stressed or injured.
“He appears exhausted,” one concerned onlooker wrote at the time. “Everyone is concerned about him.”
Eventually, rescuers realized they would need another approach.
They safely sedated the moose, allowing him to finally relax after hours of struggling. Once he was asleep, the team carefully secured him in a harness and lifted his massive body out of the concrete bowl and into a trailer.
The rescuers then transported him to a nearby park, where they waited for the sedative to wear off.
When the moose finally woke up, he was free—and, thankfully, completely uninjured.
After his unexpected adventure at the skate park, the bull moose wasted no time getting back to what he was supposed to be doing: living freely in the Montana wilderness.
For the people who watched the unusual rescue unfold, seeing him safely return to the wild was the best possible ending to a very strange day at the skate park.