If there’s one thing that humans and moose can agree on, it’s that one of the best parts of fall is seasonal, quite alcoholic cider. But while humans prefer getting tizzy on fermented apples only if they’ve been turned into juice and put into nice bottles, moose are quite content to eat them off the tree and get totally, totally smashed.
This is a problem every year around Stockholm, apparently. One got caught in a swing set; hunters later found “what remained of the swing set hung up in a tree about 500 meters [about a third of a mile] from the house.” This one just got stuck in a tree himself:
Drunk moose can be a danger to themselves. (One wandered into a pond and drowned.) But they can also be dangerous to humans, when they, for instance, hang out in hordes in the front yards of neighbors, as one police officer in Stockholm reported [Note: The Swedes call moose “elk,” the same way they call an ottoman an “ektorp.”]:
“Five drunken elk were threatening a resident who was barred from entering his own home,” read an incident report on the website of the Stockholm police department.
“Police who arrived on the scene reported that the animals had been warned that the police were on their way and wisely decided to leave the address,” the report read.
We can only imagine what they were doing to the flowerbeds before they decided to go find more apples.
