Wednesday, June 1, 2016


 Alaska Dispatch News
© 2016 Alaska Dispatch News



Alaska News

For two Anchorage women, a walk in Kincaid Park turned into a terrifying moose attack


 Author: Michelle Theriault Boots


The women barely saw the moose before it was on top of them.



Catherine Dwinnell and Melanie Sandstrom were walking last Friday afternoon in an area of Kincaid Park that's technically airport land, near a mostly dried-up pond just east of Mile 7.5 of the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail. They were just west of a runway at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.



When a plane isn't landing, you can hear the grass whisper there. But when a jet is coming in overhead, the sound is deafening.



It was a warm, windy afternoon. Dwinnell was strolling as she threw a Frisbee for her dog, Molni. She was wearing bicycle gloves to keep accumulated dog slobber off her hands.



Those gloves would turn out to be important.



At just about 1 p.m., a big FedEx jet approached so close that Dwinnell and Sandstrom reached up to cover their ears. It was then that Sandstrom first saw it: A moose about 10 feet away, in some alders. The animal was agitated.



"I've walked in Kincaid so many times and seen so many moose," said Sandstrom, a former schoolteacher and mother of two who now works part-time as an instructor for a charter school. "I knew this was different."



Instantly her vision was eclipsed by a brown body, she said. The moose was on her "like a truck," Sandstrom said.



Dwinnell, a FedEx pilot, remembers the moment slightly differently. She says the moose hit her from behind before she even saw it. It happened so fast that she had a strange thought: Was the plane's landing gear coming off? Was it knocking her off her feet?



[Moose gives birth in the parking lot of an Anchorage hardware store]



The moose, an adult female that might have weighed in the neighborhood of 800-1,000 pounds, stomped on each of them repeatedly.



They both remember curling up in the fetal position. Feeling hooves on their shoulders, legs, arms, rear ends. They tried to protect their heads.



"It's such a weird experience thinking, 'I'm going to die,' " said Sandstrom.



Molni the dog ran toward the melee.



"Leave Molni! Go!" Dwinnell yelled to her dog. The dog took off. The blue heeler had been her constant companion for seven years. When Dwinnell wasn't gone flying cargo jets, the lively little dog was by her side. They had rambled all over Kincaid Park, but this spot was their favorite.



The attack continued for a period of time both women say they can't quite describe: Forever and no time at all.



Finally, the moose seemed to have left. They both rolled up like potato bugs, facing the mostly dry pond.



"We were so close we could touch each other," Sandstrom said.



She still felt danger. They heard snorting. The moose was back, stomping on them a second time. A blow rained down on Sandstrom's head. The moose stomped on their backs.



Eventually it was quiet.



"I heard Melanie say, 'Catherine, are you OK?' " Dwinnell said.



They inched together and huddled close. Dwinnell looked and saw a huge muscle-deep wound on her leg. She tried to use her bike glove to cover it, but it didn't work. Sandstrom gave her the jogging bra she was wearing. They tied it with a shoelace.



Sandstrom said she knew they had to get out of there. Dwinnell's prescription sunglasses were smashed. She couldn't see well.



The area they were in looked like "the middle of nowhere" to Sandstrom, who hadn't spent much time in that area of the sprawling park. But it was actually close to the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail.



They decided to get out of there. Shot through with adrenaline, they hobbled toward the trail, shouting.



The first to respond was a young European man in a white T-shirt. He said he was a visitor and tried to call 911 but had no idea where he was. Then, a pair on bicycles arrived. One woman said she was a nurse. It was then, Sandstrom said, that she knew everything was going to be OK.



The bystanders — including a doctor from Connecticut and his nurse daughter — stayed with the women and called 911. They took off shirts and sweatshirts and offered them as blankets and pillows.



Dwinnell says her pilot's sense of calm took over. She wasn't getting full breaths, so she forced herself to calm down.



"If I don't calm down, I won't get enough air and I'll die," she remembers thinking to herself.



Meanwhile, paramedics were having a difficult time finding the women.



An initial 911 call came in at 2:16 p.m., but the dispatcher kept getting different reports about where the patients were. Also, the women were located at a point on the Coastal Trail almost exactly the same distance from the two road access points — the Kincaid chalet and a parking lot at the John M. Asplund Wastewater Treatment Facility, near Point Woronzof, said paramedic firefighter Jaime Andersen.



Paramedics ultimately decided to stage themselves at the treatment plant parking lot and drive a emergency response SUV to the scene. But then they reached a bridge on the Coastal Trail west of the airport — the one known as "the blue bridge." They worried the SUV would test the structural integrity of the bridge, which is identical in construction to one that collapsed near Westchester Lagoon in 2014, Andersen said.



They ended up using an ATV equipped to carry out patients to make it to Dwinnell and Sandstrom at 3:16 p.m., according to 911 records.



"It took a long time," said Andersen, who was first on the scene. "A frustratingly long time."



Dwinnell ended up in the hospital with a puncture of the pleural lining of her lung and bones in her wrist broken. She has eggplant-colored bruises all over her arms and one that medical staff told her looks like a hoofprint on her back.



Sandstrom cracked ribs and had a deep laceration on her buttock — a fact that she considers lucky. The moose didn't stomp on any of her vital organs.



The initial news report, based on information from the Anchorage Fire Department, wasn't accurate. The women weren't on bicycles. They weren't on the Coastal Trail itself. And there was only one moose.



The confusion is an indication of how chaotic things can get when fire and police respond to Kincaid Park, Andersen said: Because of spotty cellphone coverage and a large and complex trail map, it's often hard to understand where exactly patients are, and 911 callers have to leave the patient to make the call at all.



It's not clear what happened to the moose.



Two biologists with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game spent an hour at the scene Friday looking for a moose but never found one.



"It really seemed to be a situation where perhaps the women got too close to the moose without realizing it, and the moose for whatever reason felt threatened," department spokesman Ken Marsh said Tuesday.



What, Sandstrom said she has asked herself, could she have done differently? Both women are longtime users of Anchorage trails who have encountered wildlife without incident many times.



Not much, Sandstrom thinks. She and Dwinnell speculate the moose may have either had a calf or recently lost one. Neither saw a calf before or during the attack. Both say they are thankful to the people on the Coastal Trail who helped.



For Dwinnell, the focus is now on her dog, which went missing during the attack. She said she immediately realized Molni was missing once the attack was over. The animal is named after a Russian word for a unique satellite orbit.



Dwinnell has printed dozens of fliers and she and friends are circulating Molni's picture on social media.



Catherine Dwinnell prepares signs for posting about her missing dog, Molni. Dwinnell lost her dog when she and a friend were attacked by a moose near Kincaid Park on May 27. (Marc Lester / Alaska Dispatch News)

Catherine Dwinnell prepares signs for posting about her missing dog, Molni. Dwinnell lost her dog when she and a friend were attacked by a moose near Kincaid Park on May 27. (Marc Lester / Alaska Dispatch News)



There have been two reported sightings since the attack: One on Kincaid's Middle Earth single-track trail and another near Carl Brady Drive, adjacent to the airport off Raspberry Road near Sand Lake Road.



Dwinnell has been back to the scene of the attack twice, first on Monday.



In hopes of luring her dog back to the area, she'd left the blue heeler's taupe dog bed blanket and a small bowl of dry dog food.



On Tuesday she walked down again with a reporter and a photographer. It was another warm day. The grasses were spring chartreuse and the pond was mostly dry. A jet was coming in to land on the runway.



As they approached, they saw a moose. Right in the same place. They walked away, as fast as they could go.


© 2016 Alaska Dispatch Publishing. All rights reserved.

There is a pretty interesting reprint in a SCI mailing this week. Let me see if I can find it.

The cows are dropping calves all over. I'm guessing the gals ran into a birthing site. One just dropped one in the Lowes parking lot on the north end of town. Another had only a few minutes of life before a black bear snatched it up on the Anchorage hillside last week.

It is a good thing neither of them were armed they might have shot the moose before it did all the damage.

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:
It is a good thing neither of them were armed they might have shot the moose before it did all the damage.

Oh,don't ya know. Nothing to be afraid of with large wild animals that live in close proximity to people . No doubt some progressive or liberal will say it was the peoples fault because they had a dog. Not that that dog did a lik of good for them . Heck , my golden retriever would have done a half decent job of running that moose off . He has on more than one occasion. . But really. We're not supposed to upset the flour a or fawna . Course maybe they were screamin
Liberals. So they wouldn't imagine that some redneck bush Alaskan with a gun may have something figured out that they don't.

quote:

No doubt some progressive or liberal will say it was the peoples fault because they had a dog.

Unfortunately there are some in the hunting/gun owning community that might say the same thing.

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:
It is a good thing neither of them were armed they might have shot the moose before it did all the damage.

Id of course wish neither of the ladies any harm, but it would be a little funny if theyd of been given pistol shaped bruises to show from the moose trying to stomp it into a permanent part of their body.

quote:

Originally posted by Cold Trigger Finger:

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:
It is a good thing neither of them were armed they might have shot the moose before it did all the damage.

Oh,don't ya know. Nothing to be afraid of with large wild animals that live in close proximity to people . No doubt some progressive or liberal will say it was the peoples fault because they had a dog. Not that that dog did a lik of good for them . Heck , my golden retriever would have done a half decent job of running that moose off . He has on more than one occasion. . But really. We're not supposed to upset the flour a or fawna . Course maybe they were screamin
Liberals. So they wouldn't imagine that some redneck bush Alaskan with a gun may have something figured out that they don't.

I didnt see anything in the article that mentioned the dog incited the moose stomping. I have seen articles in the past that have indicated that the dog came out of the brush bringing a bear back with him, but I didnt see that in this post. Ive been around birthing cow moose this time of year and found them to be very aggressive. For about the next month or so Ill be letting my dog loose around the yard, but as usual will be leashing her when on our evening walks.

Ive killed pregnant cow caribou, watched the fetus squirm and die on the frozen tundra and wont be doing it again. Killing a sow or cow anything and then being confronted and having to deal with its progeny isnt a moment Id relish.

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:
It is a good thing neither of them were armed they might have shot the moose before it did all the damage.

Do you have anything besides this to contribute, one note Johnny?

The moose was on them before they saw it and had time to react. They both dropped and covered up. One had some relatively bad injuries but was up and walking the next day. They found the dog yesterday.

Agree that I wouldn't want t shoot a cow or sow that had recently given birth . Nor do I wish that stomping on anyone. However, If its unavoidable there would be a dead cow moose ready for some charity to pick up rather than get stomped.

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:

quote:

No doubt some progressive or liberal will say it was the peoples fault because they had a dog.

Unfortunately there are some in the hunting/gun owning community that might say the same thing.

Ya, their probly progressives or liberals at heart tho.

quote:

At just about 1 p.m., a big FedEx jet approached so close that Dwinnell and Sandstrom reached up to cover their ears. It was then that Sandstrom first saw it: A moose about 10 feet away, in some alders. The animal was agitated

It seems they saw the moose before it attacked,

She still felt danger. They heard snorting. The moose was back, stomping on them a second time. A blow rained down on Sandstrom's head. The moose stomped on their backs. She still felt danger. They heard snorting. The moose was back, stomping on them a second time. A blow rained down on Sandstrom's head. The moose stomped on their backs.

Considering most people can draw and fire a handgun from a decent holster in around 1.5 to 2 seconds. Seems like they had more then enough time if not before the first attack but for sure before the second attack.



Dave you might let a moose stomp you if you could be up and walking the next day, serious injuries can take months to heal properly.

Considering most trips to the ER cost thousands of dollars if not up wards of tens of thousands.

If I can I well not let a animal that is intent of doing me injury make contact with me. Or if they do I well do every thing in my power to stop that attack.

Including killing it as fast as I can. I don't care what stage of life that animal is in.

Would be nice to have more details like type and size of bear.

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:
Would be nice to have more details like type and size of bear.

LINK

Thanks sounds like a typical predatory attack by black bear.

Nothing almost any handgun would have taken care of.

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:
Thanks sounds like a typical predatory attack by black bear.

Nothing almost any handgun would have taken care of.

Except now they are saying it might have been a Moose.

http://www.adn.com/alaska-news...e-not-bear-or-knife/

there's a reason to carry a large caliber handgun with you when you walk out your front door...

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:
Thanks sounds like a typical predatory attack by black bear.

Nothing almost any handgun would have taken care of.

If you're a homeless bum, you would have sold the pistol for some spice or Olde English.

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:

quote:

At just about 1 p.m., a big FedEx jet approached so close that Dwinnell and Sandstrom reached up to cover their ears. It was then that Sandstrom first saw it: A moose about 10 feet away, in some alders. The animal was agitated

It seems they saw the moose before it attacked,

She still felt danger. They heard snorting. The moose was back, stomping on them a second time. A blow rained down on Sandstrom's head. The moose stomped on their backs. She still felt danger. They heard snorting. The moose was back, stomping on them a second time. A blow rained down on Sandstrom's head. The moose stomped on their backs.

Considering most people can draw and fire a handgun from a decent holster in around 1.5 to 2 seconds. Seems like they had more then enough time if not before the first attack but for sure before the second attack.



Dave you might let a moose stomp you if you could be up and walking the next day, serious injuries can take months to heal properly.

Considering most trips to the ER cost thousands of dollars if not up wards of tens of thousands.

If I can I well not let a animal that is intent of doing me injury make contact with me. Or if they do I well do every thing in my power to stop that attack.

Including killing it as fast as I can. I don't care what stage of life that animal is in.

I happen to know one of the women involved. She's no idiot. I almost always have a pistol on my hip when I'm doing yard work. More worried about the moose than the bears, although I had a black bear traipse through my yard while I was mowing the grass a few years back. He could have cared less that I was there. Anchorage's problem isn't people not carrying guns, it's moose that haven't been educated. We need to cull them.

As I've said before, I carry mostly for the two legged problems, not the four legged. With the advent of "legal" pot, a distinct change has occurred. I see scumbags that I recognize from the Lower 48 settling in. They aren't here for the fresh air and wholesome lifestyle, like me and others.

My friend is guilty of momentarily not being aware of her surroundings at a time moose are known to be aggressive. Nonetheless, she and her friend were more likely to be accosted by zombies from the numerous bum camps around town than a moose or bear. We just had a bum/zombie come out of the woods as a possible stabbing victim. Then it might have been a bear. They shot the bear. Now F&G thinks it was a moose stomping. As I said, most bums don't have guns but that doesn't make them harmless.

I don't think I ever wrote anything about the women being anything beside being unarmed.

I have bears around a lot too along with the wolves coyotes ect. I get them on the game cam behind the house regularly. They have been on the deck in the yard chased by the dog.

I shot a 500 pound one back there some years ago.

I watch two good size boars fighting over a sow while I was mowing grass it was interesting.

Just because you don't live in AK doesn't been you don't have to deal with bears. No moose around here a very few pass through once in a great while.

Two legged predators can be a problem also just another reason to carry. Don't have many around here I live a fair ways from the closest crime problem area.

So what you are saying it was better for the women to get stomped by one of your problem moose then for them to have shot it and not be stomped or shot it and had less injuries.

Another attack, I used to fish MacDonald Creek in Glacier almost every day in the summer.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016...r-national-park.html

I can't comment on enraged moose but I can on the dog. If that heeler had of been worth a shit, he'd have drove the moose off or at least sold the store trying to protect them. In stead of saying "run away, fido", I'd be saying "sic em".