Well-loved moose at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo passes away

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- Tahoma the moose may not have been born in Colorado Springs, but he quickly found a loving home for more than a decade at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

But zoo staffers had to make the difficult decision just a few weeks before his 13th birthday to euthanize Tahoma due to chronic arthritis pain and other medical conditions that couldn't be controlled with treatments.

Tahoma first came to the zoo when he was a 10-month-old calf and started making friends almost immediately when guests would visit the Rocky Mountain Wild exhibit.

“Tahoma had this special way of connecting with people,” said Basia Dann, Rocky Mountain Wild animal keeper. “It was like he knew when we were busy and he needed to ‘work’ a little harder to reach more people. We would find huge crowds of people admiring him on busy days. He would position himself really close to people and create those opportunities for us to answer questions about moose and teach people about him to foster those important connections. That’s our job, and he was really good at it.

The zoo would also make an annual spectacle of weighing Tahoma's antlers, and the zoo says people have even gotten tattoos of his face.

Though the zoo was closed in Tahoma's final days, he was visited by workers from every department at the zoo, with everyione "showering him with love on his last few days," according to Rebecca Swicker, an animal care manager who worked with Tahoma for 10 years.