It was early morning, just before sunrise in Alberta’s Jasper National Park, when Kellie Paxian thought she had run out of luck.
She was driving with her husband Matt Murray along Maligne Lake Road, leading to the eponymous lake, the largest natural one in the Canadian Rockies. They were on the lookout for moose on June 22 — but unlike previous trips to the area where she spotted many of the giant animals, this time was proving to be uneventful.
After reaching the lake without a sighting, they decided to turn their car around.
“Then I just see this majestic creature coming towards me, from the fog, from the mist,” Paxian told National Post over the phone on Tuesday. “I stopped in my tracks, so shocked.”
As the moose walked toward the vehicle, Paxian said she pulled over in an effort to keep a safe distance. She also didn’t want to startle the moose by continuing to drive. Moose can be “quite skittish” and sometimes “they can get aggressive if provoked,” she said.
“My experience is they’re quite shy, so I expected it to turn and run into the bushes,” she said. But instead, the moose, a large male with a full set of antlers, kept approaching. She opened her car window to get a better view in the morning fog.
The moose didn’t stop. He calmly approached the vehicle as Paxian continued to film. She said her and Murray were in shock when it came closer and started licking the side of the car.
“We didn’t even think to roll up the window or drive away, because it was now so close,” she said.
This was far from the couple’s first wildlife encounter.
Paxian is a safari specialist who spends most of the year in South Africa, hosting and organizing safaris. She is also the founder of travel website, Adventurelust. She is originally from Abbotsford, B.C. and returns to Canada for three to four months a year. Lessons learned on safari — like being approached by elephants and lions — helped the couple remember to remain calm.
Paxian said she let the “moose control the interaction.”
Male moose, called bulls, can come close to weighing 750 kilograms or more than 1,600 pounds,
according to the Canadian Encyclopedia
. Only bulls grow antlers. There are an estimated 500,000 to one million moose in Canada, per the Canadian Wildlife Federation.
As the moose licked the side of the car, Paxian’s mind was racing.
“Do I drive away? I don’t want to startle it,” she said.
It felt like a lifetime as the moose lingered, although it was only around a minute, said Paxian.
As the moose moved its head out of the vehicle, Paxian released the brake and slowly pulled away. At the end of the video, Paxian’s husband can be seen staring at the camera in disbelief. Then, they exhale and let out audible gasps.
“It was just absolutely incredible to have an animal like that bless you with their presence. It was something I could never have anticipated,” she said. “You really felt its energy, and he had such kind eyes. He was just a giant, majestic moose coming to say, ‘Hi.’ And we did the best we could in this situation.”
Paxian clarified that people should not approach wild animals and she advises against feeding or trying to interact with wildlife. However, she said she was grateful for the encounter.
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