If you have a pool in your backyard and a spare trail camera laying around the house, you might want to set it up so you can monitor the pool while no one is around.

There appears to be a new trend happening lately where people keep finding wildlife swimming in their pools while they aren’t around. Last week, we saw a family in Florida discover an alligator swimming in the pool of their rental home, and now a couple in Ottawa had a similar experience – except theirs was much more Canadian.

While on his way to the kitchen for breakfast one morning, Paul Koch says he looked out the window and saw a cow moose standing in their backyard pool.

“I just came up from downstairs to get my breakfast, walked by the kitchen window on the way to the fridge and looked out and there she was thrashing around, trying desperately to get out of the pool,” he said.

Koch said he and his wife have been in their home for 40 years, and have never even seen a moose in, or around their neighborhood. So imagine their surprise when they looked outside that morning. Paul guessed the animal weighed somewhere in the 700 – 1,000 pound range, and fell into his pool around 7 a.m.

“We’ve pulled lots of dead squirrels from the pool and chipmunks and things like that, but never a moose.”

The moose’s private pool party lasted around three hours, as Koch said she finally found her way out around 11 a.m.

Good news! The young female moose who went for a swim in a pool in the Hunt Club area this morning, exited the pool on her own and made her way back to her natural habitat.

No chemical immobilization necessary.

Thank you to our partners @NCC_CCN and @OttawaPolice! #OttCity pic.twitter.com/Lt4gNrnSVk

— Ottawa By-law (@OttawaBylaw) May 29, 2020

Ottawa police said they had received a call regarding a moose in traffic just before 7 a.m. in the same area as Koch’s house, then got a second call at 8:37 a.m. from Koch reporting the animal in his pool.

“There’s a cover on the pool all the time at night.. I think she may have stepped on it thinking she could walk on it, and that’s how she got in there,” Koch said according to CBC