Sometimes animals are misunderstood. Sometimes we just want to make new friends, but we don't know how to express our love and take a large-caliber bullet for our trouble.
Believe me: I, Harambe, would know.
Anyway, usually you Americans don't have many wildlife concerns. There's a squirrel here, a mouse infestation there, maybe a bird's nest in your gutter every now and then.
Then, there's Alaska:
A large bull moose spent more than an hour stomping on the sled dog team of a rookie Iditarod musher in the wilds of Alaska last week — and the attack didn't end even after Bridgett Watkins emptied her gun into the animal.
She said on Facebook Friday that the moose, after seriously injuring four of her dogs, wouldn't leave and that the ordeal stopped only after she called friends for help and one showed up with a high powered rifle and killed the moose with one shot.
"This has been the most horrific past 24 hours of my life," she posted after the Thursday moose attack on the Salcha River trail system near Fairbanks.
Welp, that's one way to spend your Thursday. I mean, we've kind of grown accustomed to moose as being a docile sort of animal: They're big, kinda dopey-looking, sort of ungainly, and the most famous moose of all time is... this guy:
But they're not exactly the gentlest of creatures. By one estimate, they injure more people in Alaska every year than grizzly bears and black bears combined.
Watkins said that the attack, first reported by the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, happened while she was on a 52-mile (83.7-kilometer) training run for the nearly 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. It starts March 5 in Anchorage.
"As he charged me I emptied my gun into him and he never stopped," she wrote on Facebook. "I ran for my life and prayed I was fast enough to not be killed in that moment. He trampled the team and then turned for us."
Watkins said she and a friend who was trailing her on a snowmobile took refuge next to the snowmobile.
All four injured dogs are on the mend, by the way. Watkins managed to cut six other dogs free to protect them from the rampage.
If you're running the Iditarod and you see a moose... best advice is to just keep running.
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