Moose Antler Turns Up in Wallingford

Every day, three times a day, Debbie Johnson drives around the parking lot of the Homewood Suites in Wallingford.  Friday morning, just up the hill from the "clean up after your pet" sign on a grassy area, she spotted something unusual.

"I said, 'What is that?'", said Johnson, the motel manager. "Is that a moose antler?"

She called her husband, who told her Connecticut does have moose now.  "I don't remember that from being a kid growing up in Wallingford," she said.

There's bark missing from a tree near where she found the antler, the tree she thinks the moose used "to get that thing off its head."

She and others from the Homewood Suites looked for the other antler and the moose itself without success.

A wildlife expert from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection believes the antler may not have come directly from a moose, but from someone who dumped the antler in Wallingford.

"Doesn't really seem like a likely spot where an antler would be," Andy Labonte said.  "Normally they drop the antlers at the end of January."

The antler may go on the wall near the front desk, she said, and there may be another new installation too.

"Yeah, moose crossing - I guess we need one in the parking lot seeing as how we have a moose on the loose," Johnson said.

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