Schoolchildren in the Canadian city of Saskatoon are unlikely to forget the arrival of their new classmate.
Lessons had not yet begun when the runaway moose crashed through the window just before 9am yesterday.
As teachers ushered the children out of the classroom to safety and called police, the moose took up a position in the middle of the floor next to a desk, as if waiting for instruction.
Photographs and videos of the moose at Sylvia Fedoruk public school quickly spread online after the initial shock was eased by the news that nobody had been injured.
“Students will have quite the story to tell when parents ask, ‘How was school today?’”, the government of Saskatchewan tweeted.
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Officials also confirmed that the moose had been safely removed from the classroom and released back into the wild.
One parent who took a video of the scene said she was doing the school run when her youngest child cried out: “Mom, there’s a moose.”
“And of course, I’m like, ‘No, there’s not a moose. What are you talking about?’ ” Ashley Young told Global News. “And he said, ‘I’m not kidding this time.’ Sure enough, I drove back around and I saw a moose in the window just kind of standing there.
“So I parked my car and came back around and got a little video and some pictures to get some evidence that, yeah, there’s a real live moose in the school.”
Others had seen the moose running through the neighbourhood before it entered the school and conservation officers believe it may have been stressed by dogs in the area.
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“It ended up in this area at the school where it obviously panicked and went through a glass window,” said Steve Dobko, a Saskatchewan official. “The school responded very well and got the children into some classrooms at the back of the school so there was no further risk to the children.”
Dobko said the female moose was not yet two years old and weighed about 800lb.
