For the past six weeks, a pair of moose in northern Michigan have gotten into an unusual routine.
Every day, around the same time, the animals go to the front window of a cabin in the Gwinn area of Marquette County, poke their heads through, and are fed a variety of root vegetables, The Grand Rapids Press reported.
Shawna, whose friend owns the property and feeds the moose every day, said it all began a few weeks ago when the area was hit with a snowstorm. The moose, which have been given the names Sunshine and Jumper, had previously been eating deer bait on the property until the snow made it too difficult to do.
"They found us. We didn't find them," said Shawna, who originally showed the videos of the moose feedings to TV 6 in Negaunee earlier in the week. "We had no plan on doing this."
Shawna said both moose are almost the size of a horse, and she assumes they are twins. She added that they get along with each other and do not fight over the root vegetables. She and her friend acknowledge that giving food to the wild animals is dangerous, and they only interact with the moose through the open window. Shawna's reasoning is that the animals are clearly hungry, which is why they wandered onto the property for the deer bait in the first place.
This fall, after a heavy snowfall, is when the moose's hoof prints were first noticed. Then, only a few days later, Shawna and her friend saw the pair of moose for the first time from an estimated 50 yards away. They began throwing bait at the animals, which got as close as 10 yards to the humans.
"We actually just basically stopped carrying the food through the 2 feet of snow," Shawna said. "They just basically kept coming closer and closer."
In time, they began giving sugar beets and cabbage to the animals.
"Every time they opened the (window) curtain, the moose got excited and came running, knowing activity at camp is kind of a food thing," Shawna said.
The moose now know the sound of a car pulling up to the cabin, and stop by every afternoon to be fed through the window. Shawna and her friend both know that the odds of the moose showing up to the cabin after this winter are slim.
"It's just been a real treat for the last six weeks to watch these animals," said Shawna, who told the newspaper to leave her last name out of the article in order to keep people away from her property and the animals. "They are just absolutely amazing creatures, and they are very personable with us."
