HAILEY, Idaho — An Idaho family is still shaking their heads after a moose ended up inside their house for nearly two hours Sunday.
Homeowner Julie Emerick said at first, the animal was right outside her bedroom window.
“The moose came along the eave of the house,” she said. "The dog started barking, and I opened the blind and the moose was eating on that bush.”
Moments later the large moose was inside the house. “She just went whoosh! And I was like, “Oh! Oh no!’ So I ran up and got my husband.”
The moose had fallen into a window well, and the latch was unlocked, so the moose was able to push the window open, landing safely in a bedroom.
Emerick says her husband was the first person to come face to face with the animal.
"I could hear him from downstairs, open the bedroom door of my son's room and go, 'Oh!' and then he slammed the door, comes running back upstairs, and he said, 'The moose is standing in Josh's bedroom!'"
Luckily, Josh Whitlock wasn’t home at the time. "It was kind of a weird text to get, saying there's a moose in my bedroom," Whitlock said. “So that was kind of surprising like, 'Oh, really?'"
Meantime, police and fish and game officers cleared some furniture in the next room and used it like a barricade to try and get the moose up the stairs, Emerick said.
"They would come in here and they'd open the door, and they'd bang and they'd yell, and you could hear them and then all of a sudden they'd go, 'Ahhhh!' and you'd hear it charge them and they'd slam the door,” Emerick recalled.
Eventually, the moose was tranquilized and eight officers carried it up the stairs.
"I come down to the basement and everything's like, there's poop everywhere, and it was kind of unbelievable,” Whitlock said.
Aside from that, Emerick says there was barely a scratch on the moose or her house.
“She was the most polite moose you could have had in your house,” she said with a laugh.
Fish and game officers woke the moose up just outside the house and it went on its way.