We here at Blue Crab Boulevard work tirelessly to warn the world about the dangers of the Animal Uprising™. Oh, sure, it's a thankless task but we keep at it as a service to all of human kind. We're so altruistic, we amaze ourselves. But we despair sometimes when we come across stories that indicate that some people are actually help the animals in their evil plots. Like those darn Norwegians.
The moose, believed to be a yearling, had apparently tried to cross the frozen Hobøl River in Østfold County, southeast of Oslo. The ice, however, had collapsed several places in the river, forming a sort of bobsled track that made it too difficult for the young moose to make his way up to the bank.
Exhausted, the moose had finally given up and was found lying down in the icy water that had seeped up through the ice.
He would have surely frozen to death if Jørgen Helgestad and Håkon Paulsen hadn't come along and found him.
"When he (the moose) saw us, he tried to get up and get away, but looked just like Bambi on the ice," Jørgen told Aftenposten.no, referring to the classic Disney animated film where a baby deer repeatedly tries to stand on some ice but slips and falls every time.
So Jørgen hurried home to his family's nearby farm and summoned his father, who in turn enlisted the aid of his neighbour and brother-in-law Trond Bystrøm.
Together, the two boys and the two men attempted a rescue operation. They placed a ladder over the narrow river, Tor Arne Helgesen climbed over it and after five attempts, managed to get a rope around the moose's neck. The four of them then carefully towed the moose on to land.
They dragged the moose out with a rope around its neck to rescue it. This is also known as "hanging". The now dead moose was then reanimated as a zombie with the "help" of the humans.
The moose was dangerously cold and weak, so the four tried administering first aid, drying and massaging the animal to boost circulation. The moose "was so exhausted it just kept lying there," Jørgen said, but after awhile it stood up and ambled off into the woods.
We sincerely hope we never get rescued by these guys. (We prefer the "deer hockey" method of rescuing stranded animals). Incidentally, they shot the zombie moose a few days later, presumably with a silver bullet.
