Rick Schuh is warning visitors to Jasper National Park to be wary of moose on the road after one of the burly ungulates treated him to an unexpected car wash.
Schuh and his wife Monica were driving near Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park on Sunday when a moose emerged from the bush and began to sample the paint job on their SUV.
The moose gave Schuh’s Nissan Rogue a thorough spit shine, slurping at the bumper and nibbling at the grille.
“When a giant animal like that wants to lick your car, you let it,” Schuh said in an interview with CBC News.
“It was calm, it was docile. We just let it do its thing and made sure we kept the windows up.
“It was a free car wash, just wait your turn.”
The dirtier the car, the more time it spent. We were just a giant mobile salt lick.– Rick Schuh
Schuh wasn’t the only driver treated to a tongue-washing. He thinks the moose had a hankering for the taste of road salt.
“We noticed that it stopped briefly to lick a Mercedes,” he said. “It was a beautiful white Mercedes, nice and clean, and it spent barely any time on that.
“The dirtier the car, the more time it spent. We were just a giant mobile salt lick.”
Schuh, who captured the encounter on video, said it was exciting to come “eyeball to eyeball” with a moose but he’s concerned about how bold the animal was with humans and vehicles.
“It was just incredible that our car was able to get that close to a moose and came away unscathed,” he said.
“Usually if you’re encountering a moose in your car that close, it’s not going to end well.”
Moose are particularly active this time of year. Late September, early October is peak rutting season.
Bulls dig rutting pits and fight each other. Cows wallow in pits, feed and get pursued by bulls.
And during this particularly hormonal time, moose sightings often spike.
Darcy Hollingsworth enjoyed a moose encounter of a different kind on a Saturday afternoon drive through central Alberta.
Hollingsworth, a bison farmer from Rocky Mountain House, was driving near the town of Eckville when he spotted an animal a few metres from the road, rummaging about in a canola field.
It was a moose with what appeared to be an entire shrub ensnared in its antlers.
“It just caught my eye as something strange out there,” Hollingsworth said.
“It looked like a giant mullet. It was a ball of canola, probably three feet by three feet.”
The frisky bull crossed the road in front of Hollingsworth’s vehicle and leaped a fence, its crown still intact.
Hollingsworth figures the bull was donning some camouflage for the upcoming hunting season. His video of the encounter has been viewed more than 4,000 times.
“It was just our good fortune to come along and get a video of it,” he said.
“If it makes people happy and laugh about it, that’s great.”