When a snowstorm headed toward Alaska the evening of Dec. 15, Tyra Bogert headed to her sister’s house in case the power went out. As she scrolled through TikTok with her nephew, she noticed a notification from her Ring camera.
The camera, set up at her front door, had picked up some motion. Curious, Bogert clicked on the notification and watched live as a “one-in-a-million” occurrence happened.
A moose walked by and shook its body, almost like a disgruntled dog, and then “pop,” its antlers snapped off its head. The animal, clearly started by what happened, quickly ran away.
Bogert couldn’t believe what he’d watched happen in real time.
She told TODAY.com that her husband Chance, who was at work, called right after to ask who had been at the door.
“And I’m like, ‘Dude, you’ve got to watch it for yourself! You’ll be so surprised. I don’t want to ruin it.'”
She says her brother told her to post the video because he’d never seen anything like it on screen.
“He’s like, ‘I don’t think there’s any video of a moose shedding his antlers and the fact that you had both of them drop at the same time… I don’t think that’s ever been recorded,'” Bogert tells TODAY.com.
She posted the video on TikTok and Facebook, where it immediately went viral.
Bogert lives in a town called Houston, about an hour and a half north of Anchorage. She says she and her husband moved to their home in 2020 and got the Ring camera in 2021 for “security purposes,” but have mostly ended up capturing footage of the local wildlife.
“We’re pretty far out here. We’re not like a suburban community or anything like that,” she explains.
Bogert says she comes from a family of avid hunters and her husband’s brother is going to help them mount the 50-inch rack from the video.
She says she loves how often she sees moose at her home and is thrilled so many people have enjoyed her videos. Bogert says many people have told him they didn’t even know moose lost their antlers.
“They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t even know the moose did this in the first place and what do you mean? They can just shake their head and the antlers fall off? They don’t have to be like fighting or scratching a tree?'” she says. “It’s pretty crazy how many people are just uneducated on moose.”
“They’re so underrated …but they’re really cool animals,” she says.
CORRECTION (Dec. 23, 2022 at 12:20 am ET): An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled Tyra Bogert’s last name as Bogart. It has been corrected to Bogert.
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