grandpawrichard
04-05-2004, 08:19 AM
I think that this young boy learned a Huge Lesson!
Stomped by a moose
Animal attacks boys, leaves 7-year-old with a broken leg
By DOUG O'HARRA
Anchorage Daily News
(Published: March 31, 2004)
Resting at Alaska Native Medical Center on Tuesday with his mother, Kelly, Cade Scholz, 7, recounted the confrontation in his neighborhood Monday night with a moose that stepped on and broke his leg. (Photo by Jim Lavrakas / Anchorage Daily News)
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Cade Scholz was outside before dinner Monday with his Super Soaker squirt gun when he and a few other neighborhood boys saw a moose browsing along a quiet street off Lake Otis Parkway.
They began to follow it. At some point, the moose charged. Boys scattered.
Seven-year-old Cade slipped on the ice.
As fast as a flailing hoof, the moose reared up and stomped, leaving the first-grade student from Lake Otis Elementary School with two broken bones in his lower left leg.
Scholz later said he didn't squirt the moose and sure didn't mean for anything bad to happen. He was just playing near his home in Manoogs Isle Mobile Home Park.
"I was walking home," the boy said Tuesday, as he rested in his bed at the Alaska Native Medical Center, a cast on his leg and his mother, Kelly, at his side. "The moose saw me and thought I was going to shoot him with the squirt gun. And then it charged me and it jumped on me and it broke my leg."
Trystan Moses, an eighth-grader at Hanshew Middle School, said he and Scholz were closest to the moose when it began "jogging" toward them.
"I was going to try to scare the moose away, and the little kid was following me and I kept telling him to get back," Moses said in a phone interview later in the day. "I told him to move and he moved right in front of it."
The moose busted up Cade's squirt gun too, Moses said, before trotting off.
Moses and several other boys then carried Scholz to his home about a block away. It was about 6:30 p.m.
"He was really scared, and he was crying, and he was in a lot of pain," said Sequoyah Scholz, his older sister. "We laid him on the couch and we could see right away that his leg was broken."
Kelly Scholz, visiting a neighbor, rushed home and drove the boy to the hospital. Doctors later said it was a clean break and would likely heal in about six weeks, she said.
The boy will have to practice using crutches, and he wasn't happy about it.
"He's a trooper," Scholz added, as her son dug into his lunch in his hospital room. "He's actually pretty brave, and I think he likes all the attention he's getting."
The moose, wearing an old tracking collar, was probably a cow moose studied a few years ago, said biologist Rick Sinnott, with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. On Monday night and Tuesday morning, Sinnott and assistant biologist Jessy Coltrane looked for the animal but didn't find it.
The attack marks the first report of a moose seriously hurting a person inside Anchorage this winter, Sinnott said. An estimated 1,200 moose have converged on the city this year, driven into neighborhoods and trails by deep snows in the hills.
"This time of year, we tend to get more moose that get a little bit cranky," Sinnott said. "They're tired of walking around through the snow every day, just like we would be."
People have not reported an unusual number of aggressive moose this winter, Sinnott said. One resident and a manager at Manoogs Isle said there hadn't been major problems with moose in the park either.
During an average year, moose hurt a half dozen Anchorage residents, with one or two suffering serious injuries, Sinnott said. Two people were kicked to death in separate incidents in the mid-1990s.
Last winter, Anchorage skier Michael Vogel was kicked in the face by a moose while jogging and suffered seven broken bones and more than $20,000 in medical costs. In May, a moose broke the wrist of cyclist Kathleen Laughlin in Hillside Park.
Ten days ago, Vogel shot a moose that charged him in Kincaid Park. That incident, along with a surge in the number of moose hit by vehicles on Anchorage streets, has triggered a public debate over how the city and its wildlife managers ought to deal with 1,000-pound creatures that roam trails and streets.
A new organization called the Alaska Moose Federation has been lobbying for a law that would allow the group to transplant excess urban moose to other areas in the state, said director Gary Olson. Others have argued that aggressive moose should be killed quickly, or that people must be wary and willing to yield when the animals approach.
A few moose attacks will be inevitable as long as people want to have the animals inside the city, Sinnott said. But the risk is extremely low.
Whether Sinnott kills this particular animal or takes some other action will depend on how it behaves -- if he can find it.
"The cut-off is if I decide I can't walk away from that moose without it hurting someone else, then I shoot it," he said.
Cade's fellow students at Lake Otis elementary were alarmed at the news, but planned to make him get-well cards and looked forward to his return next week, said his teacher, Jan Clayton.
"It was pretty scary to hear about it," Clayton said. "But I think he's a pretty durable little guy."
As he rested in the hospital on Tuesday, Cade was philosophical about what happened. At first, he'd told his mother that he wished God hadn't made moose, he said solemnly. "But she told me that God made moose to feed people, and feed the wolves."
The family has already coped with more than its share of medical tragedy, his mother said. In 2002, the boy's father, Chad, was struck by a car while crossing Lake Otis Parkway and remains at home, partly disabled and unable to speak.
"We've been through a lot the last few years," Scholz said.
Cade has drawn his own lessons from his brush with danger.
"You should tell everybody in the neighborhood to keep their kids inside until they get this moose," he told his mom.
"That's a good idea," she replied.
"Because they might end up just like me," he said.
Daily News reporter Doug O'Harra can be reached at do'harra@adn.com.
:eek: :eek:
Dick
Stomped by a moose
Animal attacks boys, leaves 7-year-old with a broken leg
By DOUG O'HARRA
Anchorage Daily News
(Published: March 31, 2004)
Resting at Alaska Native Medical Center on Tuesday with his mother, Kelly, Cade Scholz, 7, recounted the confrontation in his neighborhood Monday night with a moose that stepped on and broke his leg. (Photo by Jim Lavrakas / Anchorage Daily News)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cade Scholz was outside before dinner Monday with his Super Soaker squirt gun when he and a few other neighborhood boys saw a moose browsing along a quiet street off Lake Otis Parkway.
They began to follow it. At some point, the moose charged. Boys scattered.
Seven-year-old Cade slipped on the ice.
As fast as a flailing hoof, the moose reared up and stomped, leaving the first-grade student from Lake Otis Elementary School with two broken bones in his lower left leg.
Scholz later said he didn't squirt the moose and sure didn't mean for anything bad to happen. He was just playing near his home in Manoogs Isle Mobile Home Park.
"I was walking home," the boy said Tuesday, as he rested in his bed at the Alaska Native Medical Center, a cast on his leg and his mother, Kelly, at his side. "The moose saw me and thought I was going to shoot him with the squirt gun. And then it charged me and it jumped on me and it broke my leg."
Trystan Moses, an eighth-grader at Hanshew Middle School, said he and Scholz were closest to the moose when it began "jogging" toward them.
"I was going to try to scare the moose away, and the little kid was following me and I kept telling him to get back," Moses said in a phone interview later in the day. "I told him to move and he moved right in front of it."
The moose busted up Cade's squirt gun too, Moses said, before trotting off.
Moses and several other boys then carried Scholz to his home about a block away. It was about 6:30 p.m.
"He was really scared, and he was crying, and he was in a lot of pain," said Sequoyah Scholz, his older sister. "We laid him on the couch and we could see right away that his leg was broken."
Kelly Scholz, visiting a neighbor, rushed home and drove the boy to the hospital. Doctors later said it was a clean break and would likely heal in about six weeks, she said.
The boy will have to practice using crutches, and he wasn't happy about it.
"He's a trooper," Scholz added, as her son dug into his lunch in his hospital room. "He's actually pretty brave, and I think he likes all the attention he's getting."
The moose, wearing an old tracking collar, was probably a cow moose studied a few years ago, said biologist Rick Sinnott, with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. On Monday night and Tuesday morning, Sinnott and assistant biologist Jessy Coltrane looked for the animal but didn't find it.
The attack marks the first report of a moose seriously hurting a person inside Anchorage this winter, Sinnott said. An estimated 1,200 moose have converged on the city this year, driven into neighborhoods and trails by deep snows in the hills.
"This time of year, we tend to get more moose that get a little bit cranky," Sinnott said. "They're tired of walking around through the snow every day, just like we would be."
People have not reported an unusual number of aggressive moose this winter, Sinnott said. One resident and a manager at Manoogs Isle said there hadn't been major problems with moose in the park either.
During an average year, moose hurt a half dozen Anchorage residents, with one or two suffering serious injuries, Sinnott said. Two people were kicked to death in separate incidents in the mid-1990s.
Last winter, Anchorage skier Michael Vogel was kicked in the face by a moose while jogging and suffered seven broken bones and more than $20,000 in medical costs. In May, a moose broke the wrist of cyclist Kathleen Laughlin in Hillside Park.
Ten days ago, Vogel shot a moose that charged him in Kincaid Park. That incident, along with a surge in the number of moose hit by vehicles on Anchorage streets, has triggered a public debate over how the city and its wildlife managers ought to deal with 1,000-pound creatures that roam trails and streets.
A new organization called the Alaska Moose Federation has been lobbying for a law that would allow the group to transplant excess urban moose to other areas in the state, said director Gary Olson. Others have argued that aggressive moose should be killed quickly, or that people must be wary and willing to yield when the animals approach.
A few moose attacks will be inevitable as long as people want to have the animals inside the city, Sinnott said. But the risk is extremely low.
Whether Sinnott kills this particular animal or takes some other action will depend on how it behaves -- if he can find it.
"The cut-off is if I decide I can't walk away from that moose without it hurting someone else, then I shoot it," he said.
Cade's fellow students at Lake Otis elementary were alarmed at the news, but planned to make him get-well cards and looked forward to his return next week, said his teacher, Jan Clayton.
"It was pretty scary to hear about it," Clayton said. "But I think he's a pretty durable little guy."
As he rested in the hospital on Tuesday, Cade was philosophical about what happened. At first, he'd told his mother that he wished God hadn't made moose, he said solemnly. "But she told me that God made moose to feed people, and feed the wolves."
The family has already coped with more than its share of medical tragedy, his mother said. In 2002, the boy's father, Chad, was struck by a car while crossing Lake Otis Parkway and remains at home, partly disabled and unable to speak.
"We've been through a lot the last few years," Scholz said.
Cade has drawn his own lessons from his brush with danger.
"You should tell everybody in the neighborhood to keep their kids inside until they get this moose," he told his mom.
"That's a good idea," she replied.
"Because they might end up just like me," he said.
Daily News reporter Doug O'Harra can be reached at do'harra@adn.com.
:eek: :eek:
Dick