Moose deals shock to area car dealership

Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 29, 2007 at midnight

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A lost 800-pound moose scoped out the new cars at a Broomfield auto dealership Friday morning before running toward some willows and being felled by a tranquilizer darts.

"It certainly was big enough that none of us wanted to approach it," Eric Erbsland, sales manager at Sill-TerHar's Ford-Lincoln-Mercury dealership, said of the unusual visitor. "He started out at our service department then ran all the way through, past every single new car, then pulled a U-turn and ran right at us. That's when we ran.

"He then ran through all the Aston Martins and Volvos."

"It definitely was not ideal moose habitat," Division of Wildlife spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill said of the crossroads where U.S. 36, U.S. 287 and Colorado 121 come together at an industrial park in Broomfield.

The moose shrugged off the first tranquilizer dart, went down when hit by a second but then got up and headed farther north before finally being quelled by a third, Churchill said.

Broomfield Public Works contributed a front-loader that was used to scoop up the sleeping animal and place it inside a horse trailer.

Later Friday, wildlife officials released it a couple of hundred miles away in North Park near Walden.

The moose is a male yearling, at a stage in life where it was looking for a home away from other moose, Churchill said. Moose are solitary animals except when it's time to mate.

This moose probably ventured down from North Park along drainage ditches and greenbelts, Churchill said.

The animal apparently was spotted in Erie this week and from there tried to make its way westward.

This moose probably had to cross several roads to get to the industrial park and to the parking lot of Sill-TerHar Motors, she said. Nearly 1,000 moose live in Colorado, whereas virtually none lived here before 1978, when reintroduction efforts began, Churchill said.

scanlon@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-442-8729

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