A moose caused terror when it ran loose in the Russian city of Salavat for several days while game wardens struggled to track it.
"The animal ran into the fields," said Radik Muratov, head of civil defense and emergency situations in the city, revealing that the moose ultimately died after a black car struck it on the city’s outskirts.
CCTV footage caught the moment the moose charged down an old woman while she was walking her dog, a pug. The moose, which had no antlers, leaps in front of the woman and knocks her back before scampering off into the distance.
The old woman shrieked as she went flying, sustaining bruises from her fall but not suffering any serious injuries.
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Reports suggest the pug’s barking spooked the moose, which had wandered into the city from a nearby forest, East2West reported.
Game wardens attempted to find and sedate the animal but they lost track of it near a supermarket and the animal ran to the outside of the city, where it died. The wardens would have sedated the moose and returned it to its natural habitat if they had caught it.
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A pair of dog walkers in the Losiny Osrov National Park earlier this month encountered a wild moose, which chased one of the dogs onto the walking path and then tried to attack the women, lashing out with a hoof at one of them before the other dog, a dalmatian, distracted it.
The moose kept trying to attack the dog, but the dalmatian’s owner tried to shield it, narrowly avoiding further kicks from the moose.
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Moose sightings in Russian cities occasionally occur with the animal often suffering fatal or near-fatal incidents: A moose in 2017 wandered into Moscow in the autumn and nearly drowned in a pond.
A witness reported seeing a second moose laying down on the asphalt at one point and speculated the animal was tired and looking for food, according to The Moscow Times.
The two moose had wandered out of a nearby national park and required help from civil defense authorities to corner and trap them so they could be returned to their natural habitats.
