A moose broke through a window and into a former pizza shop on East Main Street in Dover-Foxcroft on Friday morning, resulting in a flurry of comments and jokes about the perpetrator pictured in a post on the Dover-Foxcroft Police Facebook page.
While seeing a moose in downtown is not unusual for this rural town of about 4,200 residents located an hour south of Moosehead Lake – which is prime moose country – having one breaking and entering is, said Sheila Bragg in the Dover-Foxcroft Town Office.
“We have them around. You see pictures of them standing under stoplights. It’s kind of cute. People will comment and say, ‘They’re just waiting their turn at the traffic light,’ ” Bragg said.
The pizza shop does not have a tenant at this time. It was formerly the home of Mission Impizzable, which moved down the street over a year ago.
Officer Matt Poole of the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Office was patrolling after midnight Thursday when he saw the moose and snapped a photo that he later posted on Facebook Friday morning with the comment: “We found the suspect, and they are not in custody. Boring right?”
After two hours, the post had more than 400 likes, 740 shares and more than 40 comments.
Dover-Foxcroft Police Chief Ryan Reardon said the moose has been seen over the past few days around town. Reardon said the moose entered the shop around 1:30 a.m.
Reardon said people in town who saw the moose said it looked young, likely 1 to 1 ½ years old. And Reardon said the bugs this time of year might have driven the moose out of the woods. He surmised it may have been seeking refuge in the Piscataquis River, which runs through town under East Main Street.
“It’s not uncommon to see a moose, we are in Central Maine, and a more rural community than most, but it’s very uncommon to see one crash through a window,” Reardon said. “I’ve been at this job for 26 years, and I grew up here, and this is the first time I’ve seen it.”
The moose population in Maine is estimated between 50,000 and 70,000, state biologists say.
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