Gabriele Goulet and her fiancé, Tim Morgan, had an unexpected visitor drop in on them on Valentine’s Day.
Goulet and Morgan, who are Park City residents, were house sitting for her parents in Pinebrook on Thursday. At around 7 a.m., they both heard the sound of glass smashing in the basement. Goulet said Morgan ran downstairs “like a hero,” thinking it was a burglar trying to enter the home.
“But, when we got downstairs we both just see this butt of a moose slowly falling into the house,” she said. “I was hysterical and panicking.”
Goulet immediately called 911, while trying to herd her parents’ cats into another room. After dispatch assured her that officers were on their way, she called her parents.
“This whole time, I was like bawling my eyes out and my parents’ first question was whether the moose was OK,” she said. “Tim was just staying in the stairs making sure the moose wouldn’t come up and attack us.”
Deputies from the Summit County Sheriff’s Office and Division of Wildlife Resources officers arrived on scene and, with the help of Goulet’s neighbors, were able to get the moose out of the basement after about an hour.
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“They were banging on the window trying to scare the moose to run out into the garage,” she said. “Eventually it just ran out and trotted down the street.”
The female moose left a trail of blood throughout the basement, likely from scratches it sustained during the fall. The moose appeared to be fine, Goulet said. She said there is a guard around the basement window but suspects the snow was covering it.
Lt. Andrew Wright, of the Summit County Sheriff’s Office, said it’s rare for the area’s wildlife to make its way into someone’s home.
“That is a very large animal and for it to be in your home, that is terrifying,” he said. “They can be very aggressive, especially in a situation like this where they are in a traumatic incident.”
Goulet and Morgan recently moved to Utah from New York City. They have seen moose before, but not this close, she said. She suspected her mom, who is a wildlife photographer, will be sad she missed the excitement.
“We have them in the backyard all the time. But, never in our house,” she said. “We knew Utah had wildlife, but we were not expecting this. We are just really grateful for how it turned out. It’s definitely a good Valentine’s Day story.”
