Have you ever seen a group of caribou travel down the river “Buddy the Elf” style?
If that’s too obscure of a reference and you somehow haven’t seen the 2003 Christmas classic Elf with Will Ferrell as a grown man elf, then that’s on you.
The Porcupine River is located in Old Crow, Yukon, which is a territory of Canada that is around 30 miles from the eastern border of Alaska. The area, like much of the northern part of North America, goes through a period called “breakup” every spring, where warmer weather causes some of the frozen lakes and rivers’ ice to break apart.
It appears that three or four caribou just so happened to be on a part of the ice that was being affected by the “breakup,” and now they are at the mercy of the river as they float along on the sheets of ice.
Facebook user Brenda Frost (who is either coincidently or purposefully named considering the topic of the video) had the camera rolling in order to catch these caribou floating right along.
In the video, she teases that these might not be the only one’s that this has happened to when she says:
“A few just went by just before this, and now there’s more.”
The area of Old Crow actually knows a lot about their Caribou heard, which is estimated to consist of around 200,000 animals. They apparently like to stay in the Old Crow area during the harsh winters, then tend to migrate farther north in Alaska when things start to warm up.
It appears that these Caribou didn’t exactly time their river crossing at the right time, and consequently were sent riding down the moving body of water with only ice underneath their feet.
The good news for the Caribou is that they are commonly known to be excellent swimmers, so it is likely that this unlucky group made their way back to dry land at some point. The bad news is that, from the looks of the video, there is a lot of ice flowing down the river with them.
Even for an animal experienced in swimming, navigating the icy waters and avoiding the massive blocks of ice is a pretty tall task.
Hopefully these caribou made their way to safety at some point, but for now, just sit back and enjoy these animals “riding the waves” of the river’s current:
Who knows?
Maybe the Caribou are actually smarter than we thought and needed to make their way down the river in a jiffy…
