Yearling moose tumbles into well Rescue takes 8 men, heavy machinery

FORT KENT – All’s well that ends well, even if it’s a moose that stumbles down a 6-foot-deep, water-filled hole in the ground at 4:30 a.m.

The situation did end well, nearly six hours later Tuesday morning, when the wet, scruffy bull moose shook off the effects of some tranquilizers and ambled back into the woods, minus most of one antler lost in its close encounter of the damp kind.

It took eight men, some heavy machinery and a rather complicated operation to extricate the moose from its early-morning predicament. The effort wasn’t completed until nearly 10 a.m.

A sleepy Phil Corriveau, who lives on Route 11 and owns a snowmobile business, first became aware of the animal’s plight early Tuesday morning when he heard unusual noises coming from across the street from his home.

Corriveau heard some kind of thrashing and grunting going on, and thinking that a cow was injured, he called his neighbor, Don Guimond, the Fort Kent town manager who also runs Guimond Farms, a nearby cattle-raising operation on Route 11.

Guimond went to the Corriveau home and headed to the well site.

“When I got near the area [where the noise was coming from], I moved some brush aside, and saw that it was not a cow’s eyes I was looking into,” Guimond said Tuesday. “I quickly realized this was a moose, possibly a yearling at about 600 pounds.”

Guimond called the Fort Kent Police Department and the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, and Warden Gary Sibley showed up, joined by Police Chief Kenneth Michaud, Officer Shawn Querze and state Rep. Marc Michaud, a friend of the police chief.

“Corriveau heard him thrashing around, most likely trying to get out,” Sibley recounted Tuesday. “The moose had crashed through a thin, metal covering over a six- to seven-foot deep well.”

The cement-encased well is 5 feet by 5 feet and located about 20 feet back from the road.

“The moose just came out of the brush back there and ended up in the hole,” Sibley said. “We helped it out.”

It actually wasn’t that simple.

Wildlife biologists Rich Hoppi and Arland Lovewell were called in from Ashland to tranquilize the moose, which they did, using a pole about 10 feet long with a hypodermic needle on the end of it.

Then the crew got some large straps that Guimond and his brother, Paul Guimond, who also operates the farm, use to lift cattle.

“After the moose was tranquilized, one of the biologists went into the well to put the straps around the animal,” Chief Michaud said.

Paul Guimond went back to his farm and came back with a large tractor with a lift on the front. With the straps in place, the moose, completely tranquilized and a total dead weight, was lifted from the well, Michaud said.

The young animal was placed on the ground and a third strap was wrapped around it. Then, using the tractor, Paul Guimond carried the moose across the road near some woods to the rear of Corriveau’s dealership.

The animal was injected in a vein in its ear with another round of drugs to revive it. About 15 to 20 minutes later, the wobbly critter got up on unsteady legs, but fell, breaking its antler.

A second attempt was more successful.

“It had scrapes and bruises, but nothing seemingly serious,” Sibley said.

“He’s out and on his way, somewhere in the woods,” Chief Michaud said.

“I really didn’t think it was going to make it, but in the end, it got up and walked away,” Don Guimond said of the situation. “It was kind of nice to see this end up this way.”