Is Alaska real life?
Most times when a human comes into physical contact with a wild animal, it’s the human’s fault.
People will approach bison at Yellowstone or try and take a selfie with a deer or any number of other dumb things and find out the hard way why you’re supposed to give them their distance, but this video shows that sometimes there’s not much you can do when an animal sets its sights on you.
A woman named Tracey Hansen was walking her dogs on the streets of Anchorage, Alaska and was very much minding her own business, just trying to get in a her steps with about 3 feet of snow piled up, when she was struck down by a powerful animal with no warning.
A woman and her husband in a nearby car captured the whole thing on video, and in that clip we can see a moose trotting along the sidewalk behind Tracey. Now, the passenger and driver sure could have warned her a bit earlier that a thousand plus pound animal was hot on her tail, but by the time they yelled out and honked the horn it was too late.
The moose closed the distance and was just a foot or two away when it reared up a mighty leg and whacked her with a stiff hoof right in the back of the head, sending her tumbling to the ground.
Fortunately, the moose ran past and didn’t start stamping, but my goodness it was a horrific hit. She suffered a cut and some bruising but thankfully was able to avoid a more serious injury.
Tracey spoke to NBC News about the incident.
“I thought someone had not been paying attention and hit me with a bike or something. I had put my hands up to my head, and I’m like, ‘I’m bleeding.
Knowing that the moose had been somewhere behind me and now, here this moose is in front of me, and I’m like, ‘Was that the moose?”
Kate Timmons, the woman who took the video, said her husband ran over to help Tracey after the moose had left the area.
“My husband was able to help pull her over the snow bank, so we could get her in the truck with her dog and kind of get her out of the way.
It definitely seemed unprovoked from our standpoint and it happened so fast it was just like, a matter of getting her out of the situation, getting her help, making sure, you know, my big thing was that she didn’t have a head trauma, that there wasn’t a bleed or something.”
All in all, it’s a good ending to a story that could have ended tragically.
Can you imagine taking your dog out for a walk and getting kicked in the back of the head by a moose? That’s a risk Alaskans take everyday, which means they are way tougher than I’ll ever be.
Keep your eyes peeled out there people, you never know what’s lurking behind you.
