Summit County firefighters are referring to an incident that began late Saturday night at a home in east Keystone as Summit County’s own version of a cat stuck in a tree.
Trapped in a 5-foot-deep window well, a young bull moose owes a debt of gratitude to the officers with Colorado Parks and Wildlife and Summit Fire & EMS for a successful rescue effort that concluded early Sunday morning with the moose returning to the woods, a bit traumatized perhaps, but no worse for wear.
“We are an all-hazards response agency,” said Steve Lipsher, a spokesman for Summit Fire & EMS. “We get everything. Our guys are resourceful, innovative and they come to every incident with the mindset, ‘We’ve got a problem here. How are we going to solve it?'”
First on the scene, Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers tranquilized the moose before requesting help from Summit Fire & EMS to set up a pulley system and haul the moose out.
“The entire operation took a while, but our firefighters were able to get the moose, estimated at 800 to 1,000 pounds, out and safely on the driveway,” the department posted on its Facebook page Sunday.
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Once removed from the window well, the moose was awakened with a counteractive agent and “continued on his moose-like way,” said Lipsher, who added the entire effort took firefighters about two hours.
No injuries were reported to either the moose or its rescuers, and the moose didn’t even break the window in his struggles, Lipsher confirmed.
Lipsher said that Summit Fire & EMS emergency crews typically use ropes and pulleys to rescue people or pull wrecked vehicles from gullies, but they can help save a moose, too.