Don’t Let Wyo Moose, Sheep Lick Your Car

Via local Jackson Wyoming newspaper The Buckrail, it seems moose and sheep have been making a bad habit of licking vehicles recently.

We humans put salt on our roads. That builds up on our vehicles. These animals like to lick that salt.

That means, to the animal, your vehicle is a big salty popsicle.

“We highly discourage the practice of allowing wildlife like moose to lick salt off vehicles,” Grand Teton NP spokesperson Denise Germann said.

At the Elk Refuge, outreach and visitor services is advising folks that it is a bad idea to let the animal lick your car.

“Though it’s salt the bighorns seek on the surface of vehicles there could also be a whole host of chemicals that could be harmful to ingest—gasoline from an overfilled tank, gas line antifreeze products like Heet, etc,” said Lori Iverson . “The refuge’s bighorn sheep population, along with many bighorns in the Rocky Mountain West, are vulnerable to pneumonia. Licking shared surfaces may increase the risk of spreading a disease, not unlike a person with a cold offering to share their lollipop with others.”

Not only is licking the salt off of a car dangerous to the animals because of whatever else could be on your car, but as many may know, its not great to have large wild animals approaching vehicles so frequently. It can be dangerous to the animals and visitors.

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