“[Staff] were all looking at each other, like, there’s no way. This is a moose. This is crazy,” school staff member Bonnie Anne Albert said
A giant moose shocked a Massachusetts town by stopping by a local school.
On Monday, the towering creature walked through drop-off at Naquag Elementary School in Rutland, Massachusetts. Bonnie Anne Albert, a paraprofessional at the school, caught the incident on camera.
In the video, the moose takes long steps past the school, walking by cars lined up to drop off children for the day. The wild animal continues onto a walkway on the elementary school campus as someone says, “Holy cannoli, that is crazy,” in response to the sighting. Another person exclaims, “How beautiful!”
Albert can seen opening the door to capture a better angle of the creature as it makes its way through the school grounds. The clip concludes with the moose passing by a playground before disappearing further down a pathway into the trees.
“To see it where I work and come here every day, it was pretty cool,” Albert told local news station WCVB-TV.
Albert added to the outlet that the school’s staff had been preparing to welcome kids at the school around 8:35 a.m. when the moose appeared. “My co-workers and I do our normal routine of picking up the kids in the morning drop off line, and to witness a moose walk on the sidewalk was a shocker and so neat,” she said.
“We were all looking at each other, like, there’s no way. This is a moose. This is crazy,” Albert said, per WCVB-TV.
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Parents and students in the cars arriving at the school also caught glimpses of the moose walking by. “All the parents, too, in the pick-up line, they’re sticking their heads out the window videoing it. It was pretty funny,” Albert added.
The rare incident even earned a social media mention from the police department in Rutland, Mass. “Special visitor in the Naquag Elementary School drop-off line this morning! [The] moose has since left the area,” the authorities wrote online alongside a photo of the moose.
The department also passed on a warning from the Mass. Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, which asked people to “never try to approach or pursue a moose.”
“Pursuit not only stresses the animal, but it adds the risk of having a moose chased out into traffic or into a group of bystanders,” the police department said. “Wildlife professionals recommend letting the moose find its way out of populated areas and into nearby forested areas.”
The Mass. Division of Fisheries and Wildlife said on its website that if people spot a moose in a densely populated area, they should “leave the moose alone” and “contact the nearest MassWildlife District Office or the Environmental Police.”