The COVID-19 pandemic is turning many of us into keen observers of the outdoors – at least from our windows.
From watching wildlife (even if it means city birds and squirrels) to seeing the local flora come alive now that it’s spring, a lot more people – professional photographers included – are snapping nature photos.
Roland Rydstrom lives in Anchorage, Alaska, and so the wildlife outside of his windows is really something to behold.
That’s probably why his album has nearly 100k shares since he posted his photos to Facebook on June 2, 2020.
With his iPhone X, he was able to share some moments from a family of moose who decided to take a rest in his yard.
He began:
“The view outside my Covid home office is better than yours today. 😊”
That’s for sure!
He reported that the baby moose twins were born in his neighborhood about 12 days before the photo was taken.
And while the family got a bit of exercise, his yard served as their home base for this particular day trip.
“They arrived a bit before 9 am and except for two quick trips around the neighborhood, they’ve been camped out here all day.”
Later, he thanked everyone who shared his photos (a group of tens of thousands), never realizing that the animals would make him go viral, despite some of the shots being pretty hilarious.
“Edit: Thanks to all who’ve shared these moose pictures. When I posted these Tuesday, I didn’t expect them to get shared throughout the world, except from my own friends. But people love moose, so… 😂”
We do! We love moose! And we didn’t even know that until we got to imagine having them camped out in our own backyard.
As for Rydstrom, this wasn’t a shocking sight.
“It’s very, very common to see moose in our backyard as it is on the normal ‘loop’ for the moose who hang out in our neighborhood.”
Now there was one critical detail that he was kind enough to provide updates for.
Concerned citizens really needed to know what happened to that flower pot!
Here it goes:
So much for the landscaping!
Rydstrom joked:
“And just like that, the marigold is knocked over and that baby pretends it didn’t have a thing to do with it…”
It turns out that just because moose are regulars in a neighborhood doesn’t mean they respect people’s property.
But Rydstrom perservered:
“And we did rebuild — after the moose left the yard, I was able to return to the scene of the crime to return the marigold pot to its rightful place. The sociopathic, marigold-hating baby moose loses this round.”
Of course, the moose didn’t stop there, but we don’t think the nibble did much damage.
Since this family seems to have become quite fond of the neighborhood (if not its marigolds), the trio was back a week later and we got to see the babies get a little bit bigger.
“We must have good grass” was the only guess Rydstrom had as to why they happened to love his yard so much.
The photos themselves are really interesting to scroll through – and in the end, we’re not sure if we’re jealous or if we feel lucky not to have to worry about these giant creatures stopping by our house.
Be sure to scroll down below to see the whole photo album of three dozen snaps.
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