Bullwinkle Goes On A Bender

It happens about this time every year. Bullwinkle gets in another fight with Rocky over who gets more time on camera. The arguments escalate into blows and Rocky ends up in the hospital. (A five ounce squirrel is no match for a 1,000 pound moose.) Bullwinkle, stricken with remorse, hits the bottle too hard and ends up in the gutter with Christmas lights tangled up in his antlers.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - What do you call a bull moose tangled in Christmas lights and drunk on fermented crab apples, standing glassy-eyed and dizzy in the front yard of a downtown bar?

Buzzwinkle?

But seriously, the juiced moose had certainly seen better days than Tuesday, when he became a bewildered tourist attraction, parked in the courtyard of Bernie's Bungalow Lounge as shoppers clicked by with their Nordstrom bags.

"He just has this goofy look on his face," said Rick Sinnott, a Fish and Game biologist who came to check on him and guessed he'd probably eaten too many crab apples from an old tree in Bernie's yard.

"He's either drunk or in gastric distress."

Even before his crab-apple bender, the downtown moose was something of a seasonal celebrity, making the television news after he spent the weekend clumping along the avenues with his big rack, thrilling the holiday shopping throngs.

But Tuesday was a banner day for moose hijinks. It started when he stopped to nibble the trees in Town Square Park, which had recently been strung with expensive LED Christmas lights. They snagged in his antlers, and he seemed roped to a tree for a while, generating numerous calls to Sinnott's office from passers-by. After some effort, the moose freed himself, but took the light string with him, dragging it through traffic.

(They have a picture). Bullwinkle was last seen sleeping it off in the yard of the bar. Next year it will happen again.

Other Links to this Post

1. The McGehee Zone — Saturday, 1 December , 2007 @ 9:18 pm

2. Pirate's Cove — Sunday, 2 December , 2007 @ 8:27 am