Triple Winter: A friendly moose

Friday, October 19, 2007

Last night we had an unexpected visitor for dinner at our house.

Sarah C. said...: WHAT?!?! This is insanity but what a great pic! I can't imagine looking out the window to see him standing there! :-); 5:20 PM
Anonymous said...: What a great photo!

I *love* moose, but unfortunately there are almost none here in New Zealand. I say "almost none" because there was a small group of them (about a dozen) introduced here around 1910 (way down south in Fiordland). The herd managed to hang around for a few decades or so, but the last one was seen in the late '60s (iirc).

However - a guy from Dunedin
still believes there are a few of them down there, and he was vindicated in 2002. He had found some hair snagged on a Fiordland bush, and sent it off to a lab in Canada for analysis. The result came back - *moose!*
( The interesting thing is that apparently DNA in hair degrades very rapidly, so it means that there were definitely moose there in 2002, and maybe even today.... :-) )
Bye for now - thanks again for the great pic!
- Andy; 10:30 PM