Moose Becomes Unlikely Home Invader In Summit County

SUMMIT COUNTY, Utah – It’s always the fear of the house sitter that something is going to go horribly wrong while the owner is away.

Still, with a home tucked away somewhere on a Summit County hillside, Gabriele Goulet and fiancé Tim Morgan didn’t think they’d be at risk of being visited by the big city crime they left behind in Jersey City.

That was until they heard glass breaking in the basement Thursday morning.

“We heard the sound of shattering glass, and it kept going because it’s a double window,” Goulet said. “Tim’s first reaction is to just, like, get up and run down and be like, ‘get out of here’ —which I thought was crazy!”

It was no crazier than what Morgan discovered when he reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Tim turns around and he’s like, ‘it’s a moose!’” Goulet said. “We see the butt of the moose, like, slowly falling into the basement.”

It may have not been a robber, but a large beast that was already bleeding on the carpet provided enough worries.

“I immediately went into panic mode,” Goulet said. “Tim was like, ‘call 911!’”

Morgan took a defensive position on the stairs.

“I grabbed a chair and kind of had it ready in case the moose started coming up, and then, you know, there’s a hallway where the moose can kind of walk out to the garage and then out to the street, so I opened the garage door, opened the door to the garage so it could get out if it found its way,” Morgan said.

Police and wildlife officers weren’t far behind.

“They went and banged on some of the intact windows to try to startle the moose to get it moving — which actually worked — and the moose walked right out of the house and into the neighborhood,” Summit County Sheriff’s Lt. Andrew Wright said.

Goulet said her parents, who own the house, were likely going to need to replace the basement carpet, but otherwise she and Morgan were grateful the situation didn’t end any worse.

“We really love wildlife, and it’s such a bummer that this happened,” Goulet said. “We already had something covering the (window well) but it was kind of a metal mesh and my dad already told me he’s going to fence it off. We don’t want this to ever happen again. We love the moose, and we want them to be able to roam around safely.”