‘There’s a moose! A moose! A moose!’

A moose is loose in Shawano County, and he is getting around quite a bit in search of a mate.

Jana Schroder Carstedt, who lives along Shawano Lake, spotted the antlered male moose standing along the water’s edge about 11:30 a.m. Friday outside her cottage near Bischoff Bay Lane.

“It was an awesome sight,” she said. “I said, ‘There’s a moose! A moose! A moose!’”

Carstedt was not the only eyewitness, either.

The state Department of Natural Resources received reports of a moose sighting one day earlier in the Marion area, and the day before that around Gresham.

Jeff Pritzl, a wildlife biologist for the state agency, said he suspects all sightings involved the same moose, and that the animal is searching for a mate during the breeding season.

“It’s not that difficult for a moose to cover that much ground,” Pritzl said.

Although sightings are uncommon in this part of the state, they are not unprecedented. A moose spotted in Marinette County a couple of years ago ended up being struck and killed by a train. Sightings have been reported in Shawano County before, too.

The state recorded 22 sightings last year, nearly all of them in far northern Wisconsin.

For the most part, however, moose stay in Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Only occasionally do they wander into Wisconsin, and even less frequently are seen this far south.

Carstedt said she has never seen one before, so she followed her visitor Friday for about an hour as he made his way east along the southern shore of Shawano Lake.

“He just kind of moseyed along,” she said. “He was pretty, very pretty.”

Pritzl said the moose found in Shawano County on Friday might stick around for a while. People should feel free to observe from a distance, but he cautioned against trying to get close.

“Give him his space,” Pritzl said, “and he’ll find his way out of the area.”