Last month, an animal loving trucker had a touching experience on the road that he’ll never forget.
In January, SooToday reported that a young trucker held a dying moose in his lap during its last moments of life. The trucker, 24-year-old Hunter Berto, was driving in Manitoba, Canada when he saw an injured moose crawling on the side of the road.
“The truck in front of me hit its brakes. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a moose pulling itself off the highway, with its front legs,” Berto told SooToday. “It couldn’t move its back legs at all. It was right on the edge of the highway. Once it got to the snow bank, it couldn’t get past that. I hit the brakes, stopped, and called the police.”
Berto parked his truck on the side of the road with his headlights on, so oncoming drivers knew to slow down. When the road was clear, he took the opportunity to help the moose drag its legs off the highway. Before he showed up, and before he could move the moose, other drivers were driving over the animal’s broken legs.
While he waited for the police to arrive on the scene, Berto sat in the snow on the side of the road with the moose.
“I just sat in the snow bank with it. It let me get right up to it. I was petting it and it put its head right on my lap,” he said. It took police about 15 minutes to arrive.
While they waited, Berto said he talked to the moose to try and ease its discomfort. “I just kept saying: ‘It’s okay. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay. It’s okay to let go. You’re not alone.’ It was just looking at me in the eyes and that was it.”
When police arrived, they put the moose down so it didn’t have to suffer any more.
Check out pictures from the touching scene below:
