Dee Brazell of Grand Marais set out to have a quiet cup of coffee on her deck at her home on Bally Creek Road at about 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday, September 20. Her husband, Mickey Brazell, had told her he had heard wolves howling and she wanted to hear them. Instead, she got a phone call from Mickey telling her to watch for a moose that had torn down the horse fencing at the neighbor’s house.
Sure enough, Dee said, she spotted the moose near the beaver dam downhill from her house. “It had its head down by the water, eating,” said Brazell. She got a pair of binoculars to see the moose better. With the binoculars she could see the moose quite clearly and when it raised its head, she could see “a mess” on its antlers.
She said there were pieces of fencing wrapped around one side the large bull moose’s head. After a few minutes, the moose sloshed out of the pond into the woods—dragging pieces of the fence behind him!
The neighbor, Donnie Sorlie, and coworker Jerry Paine arrived at that time and Dee pointed them in the direction the moose had taken. Surprisingly they could find no sign of the bull moose.
Brazell called Cook County Law Enforcement to see if a conservation officer could come to the moose’s aid. CO Darin Fagerman said there was little he could do. Local conservation officers don’t have the ability to tranquilize animals. And, Fagerman said, “He’s not going to just stop and let me take it off. Especially not now, this close to rutting season.”
In fact, that is perhaps why the moose got itself in trouble, said Fagerman. It may already be in rut and was confused by the horses in the fenced area.
Fagerman said he was not too concerned about the moose’s fate. He was pretty confident that the moose would be able to get the fencing material off, even if it meant breaking off an antler. “Someone might find a really interesting shed this spring,” said Fagerman.
Although she was disappointed that no one could help the hapless beast, she said, “It was pretty exciting to see.”
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