A moose wandered through the streets of Worcester on Wednesday, hitting a car and charging at least one person on a porch before being captured.
"I look in my rearview, and there's a moose that just literally ran right behind my car," said Casey Thomas, who had a close encounter with the animal Wednesday morning after dropping her daughter at the bus stop. "I called 911 this morning and I was like, 'Hey, there's a moose, it looks freaking huge!'"
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"We were trying to warn people to, like, get out of the way, because he seemed, like, in a panic mode," said Dan Antonucci, a Worcester DPW employee.
Antonucci and his Worcester DPW coworker recorded scary videos of the moose as it headed straight into traffic on May Street.
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"He hit a car, spun around, got up and took right back off, started jumping fences. It was pretty wild," said Antonucci. "He cracked the windows of the car and dented the door and made the car – the car almost went off the road."
The driver of the car was uninjured, but shaken up, as the moose continued its frantic frolic through city streets, eventually cornered by Environmental Police in Desire Rivera's King Street backyard, where the moose got a little too close for comfort.
"I scared, not too much, but I scared," Rivera said.
The moose was subdued by authorities with tranquilizer guns on King St.
"We're fortunate that we could get it contained in a safe spot where we could immobilize it," said Sgt. Bill Woytek with Massachusetts Environmental Police. "Each of us got a dart into it and then within five minutes it was on the ground."
Woytek says he and other members of the large animal response team were able to load the roughly-700-pound, 4-to-5-year-old male moose into a truck to transport it safely out of the city.
"It's breeding season right now," said Woytek. "I'll say it – it's looking for love in the wrong spot."
Woytek says while this is uncommon, it's not unheard of — especially during mating season.
He says a few years ago, they removed three moose from the city in one week. Woytek says this moose had only minor cuts from the accident, but was otherwise healthy, and was being released into the woods west of Worcester.
