Man Saving Moose From Halloween Decor Goes Viral

Halloween proved especially frightening for one Canadian moose over the weekend, or at least one family's Halloween decorations did. The CBC reports that Shaydon Soucy was driving with his wife Saturday to visit a friend in the British Columbia city of Fort St. John when they spotted something odd in front of a home along the way: a man in the home's yard who looked like he was attempting to pull Halloween decorations off of a tree with some kind of tube. The couple soon realized it wasn't a tree, though—it was an irritated bull moose, tangled up in black webbing and with a fake skull caught in its antlers, trying to relieve itself of these new burdens.

Soucy's wife shot video of what happened next, showing the man with the tube and Soucy, who got out to help, trying to release the moose from its bondage. At one point, Soucy moved behind a chain-link fence, where a neighbor was also recording what was going on. That's when the moose decided to wander over to those two men. "It's kind of like he knew that I was going to be attempting to help him," Soucy says, soon before the clip showed him successfully pulling the decorations off the moose. "There you go, buddy!" an excited woman in the background, perhaps Soucy's wife, can be heard exclaiming.

The moose showed its own gratitude, coming back to Soucy and affectionately licking his hand through the fence. Soucy also was able to give the animal a quick pat on the snout. "He had gained some sort of trust in me," Soucy said. The interaction soon went viral, and the comments came pouring in, per Newsweek. "What a lovely moment," wrote one observer in the comments section under the TikTok vid. Others were more nervous, with one wary watcher writing, "The way I was yelling, 'that fence ain't doing nothing,' to my phone."

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Soucy, an avid outdoorsman, now says he probably shouldn't have gotten that close to the wild animal. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game notes that while moose aren't typically aggressive, they can be if people, other animals, or cars bother them. "I would advise against it and probably wouldn't do it again, but in the moment it was worth it," Soucy tells the CBC. "It's definitely the most Canadian thing I've done." (More moose stories.)