Men dig out Alaskan moose buried by avalanche

A casual snowmobiling afternoon for a trio of Alaskan men turned into quite the adventure on Dec. 28, when the three saved a young moose they discovered buried following an avalanche.

"I am an animal lover, and I couldn't leave it there," Marty Mobley told the Alaska Dispatch. "Besides, we deal with a lot of avalanches and a lot of snow. That kind of karma is something we don't pass up."

Mobley, along with Rob Uphus and Avery Vucinich, noticed that an avalanche had come down into an area they had snowmobiled by earlier in the afternoon. Upon closer inspection, the men noticed something brown poking out of the snow — it was the moose's snout, and the young creature was moaning. Mobley and his friends grabbed shovels and began to dig the moose out.

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"It didn't even fight us," Mobley said. "It was like, 'Help me, help me.'"

After about 10 minutes of digging, the moose pulled itself out of the remaining snow, and ran "at full steam" down the mountain, apparently uninjured.

"It looked at us, shook the snow off, and off it went," Mobley said.