When you live in Anchorage, Alaska, you never know what sort of wildlife is going to show up in your backyard. That’s what Roland Rydstrom realized when an entire family of moose decided to turn his garden into a nursery over the course of a few days.
The moose made his backyard their home and there was nothing the man could do about it.
It was a wild situation.
He posted the hilarious pictures of the moose family on Facebook so that other residents in the area could have a laugh about it as well.
“I had a lot of yard work to do out back this weekend. But when the moose camp out and eat everything, you put those plans on hold,” explained Rydstrom.
Rydstrom was aware that a mama moose had given birth to two babies about twelve days prior.
However, he never expected to get to see them up close and personal in his own backyard.
The hungry animals set up shop and began to eat all of the flowers he had planted.
The only ones that they didn’t touch were the marigolds. For some reason, the beautiful yellow flowers just weren’t very appetizing.
However, the begonias in the garden certainly were tasty.
After gorging themselves, the moose passed out on the ground in what Rydstrom refers to as a “begonia sugar coma”.
With their stomachs completely stuffed, both the mama moose and her two calves were in a need of a nice long nap.
“I sat down to work, and fully expected the moose to walk away and they didn’t,” Rydstrom told The Dodo.
“They would just change positions and, as you can tell from the pictures, they just kind of moved around to meet the sun — the babies in particular.”
They settled in for the long haul, and Rydstrom was forced to put his yard work plans on hold.
However, he still did whatever he could to preserve his garden, which included making a sprint out to the yard to save one of his few remaining begonias when the animals were distracted.
“At one point, I decided to water since I couldn’t do anything else,” said Rydstrom. “When they returned, the kids had fun while mama was wondering what happened to the begonia she’d been eating earlier. I’d moved it to the table while they were gone.”
Unfortunately, despite Rydstrom’s best efforts, the moose were able to locate the new location of the begonia anyway.
“Eventually she found it *and* the one closer to the back door on the shepherd’s hook. Mama moose 2, Roland 0,” he joked.
He also captured a hilarious video of some of the many shenanigans that the moose participated in.
The babies can be seen running around their new “nursery” and having tons of fun. They played in the sprinkler, ate some flowers, and just had an all-around amazing time. Meanwhile, the mom stood close by and supervised.
“They tasted everything on their way out, and do what babies do, putting everything in their mouth,” said Rydstrom.
For many people, witnessing a moose is a once in a lifetime event.
However, when you live in Alaska, wildlife and humans live in very close proximity to each other. It results in a lot of unexpected encounters, some exciting and some outright dangerous.
While this garden sighting turned out okay in the end, when it comes to moose, there is always some risk involved. Every year in the state of Alaska, moose wound around 5 to 10 people.
However, in Rydstrom’s case, it was his poor begonias that suffered the most. He watched from inside his house, admiring the beautiful animals as his garden was slowly eaten.
Check out the full Facebook post for more pictures of the moose family below.
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https://www.facebook.com/roland.rydstrom/posts/10159004548057994
