Moose Park!

On Friday, UISS took an excursion to a moose park and silver mine! I hadn't signed up in time (I tried Wednesday, and apparently Tuesday at noon was the cut-off), so there was a good chance I wouldn't get to go! Luckily, there was a pub crawl the night before, so I got up and stood outside the bus to see if anyone would be too hungover to go. They were. So off we went!

The moose park was about an hour from Uppsala on a large tract of land. It was a chillier day than I had expected, so I waited in the sun until the moose man had loaded up his tractors and was ready to take us on a tour of his passion project.

I got to pet a moose; specifically, I got to touch his fuzzy antlers (which they can feel!). Moose hair in summer is covered with a natural mosquito repelling grease that I didn't really want to get on my hands ...

Here is what I remember about moose: Only the males have antlers, and they grow them from May to September in order to impress the lady moose when the time is right in September. The antlers then lose their blood supply and drop off. Baby moose arrive eight months later, and the mothers don't want the guys around anymore, so the moose man moves them into their own pin. The moose man has a huge amount of land, so if the moose don't want to be in his tour, they can simply run off into the wilds. We probably saw about fifteen of his seventy total moose. When a new moose is born, the moose man stays with them for three days outside, and then spends huge amounts of time with them after that, so that they will trust him for life. When a little baby girl moose named Olivia was rejected by her mother (because her brother was taking all the milk ...), the moose man took her to live inside his home for three months.

My favorite moose was named Lugwig. He was a blond moose, and kept getting in trouble. He would go and try to stick his face in people's laps, and the moose man, obviously very fond of him, would yell, "Ludwig! Nej, Ludwig!!"

Ludwig the moose

There were babies too!