It was a grim ending for one moose in Norway.
Inger Sjøberg was ice skating on Kosmo lake in northern Norway recently when she came across something dark in the ice. A moose -- or a European elk -- was stuck in the frozen lake.
"I thought it was some wood or some grass or something, and when we looked at it, we saw that it was an elk," Sjøberg told Norway's The Local. "I have never seen it before, a frozen animal in the ice."
Sjøberg snapped a photo of the mammal, which has become the quite the attraction for locals.
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It seems that the moose was trying to cross the lake when it fell into the icy water. Given the extent to which it was frozen in the ice, it's likely that the animal became trapped several days before it was first spotted on Dec. 29.
It's apparently not uncommon for a moose to become trapped in icy waters under certain conditions. The animals may be able to swim and bear cold weather, but they can still die of exhaustion if they tread water too long.
"If they don’t have anything underneath to kick up off, or if it’s so deep it can’t reach the bottom, then they can have problems," explained Christer Moe Rolandsen, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, according to Views and News from Norway.
Last year, another moose fell through some ice in Siberia. However, people in a helicopter that was flying overhead spotted the stranded animal and managed to rescue it.
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