From canine commuters to a 'brown blob': Meet the North's animal newsmakers of 2023

Every year, many of the North's biggest newsmakers are also some of its most elusive characters. They don't give interviews, hold news conferences, issue statements, or arrange photo-ops. And they definitely don't read their own press.

Sometimes they're in the news for doing extraordinary things, or turning up in unusual places. Often, though, they're just doing their thing — being animals — and it's the reactions they inspire in us humans that make news.

Here are some of the North's top animal stories of 2023.

A 'super cool' encounter with wolves

It's not unusual to spot wildlife while driving on the North's lonely highways, but Morgan Watsyk's encounter last January was rare indeed.

The Fort Simpson, N.W.T., man was driving toward Wrigley when he spotted what he first thought were some mountain goats on the road ahead. When he pulled out his camera and zoomed in, he realized what he was actually seeing was a pack of 11 wolves.

Morgan Watsyk of Fort Simpson, N.W.T., spotted a pack of wolves on the road to Wrigley, N.W.T., in January 2023, and managed to capture it on film. (Morgan Watsyk)

Watsyk's video captures his amazed reaction.

"Oh wow, that is super cool!"

A bus full of canine commuters

One of CBC North's most-read stories of 2023 came from over the border, in Skagway, Alaska, and also involved a video of a group of canines. This pack is hardly wild, though — in fact, they couldn't be more tame, riding a bus like a bunch of average jobbers.

The dogs became online sensations when Mo Thompson and her partner Lee began posting videos showing them driving their specialized bus around town, picking up animals signed up for their dog-walking and pet-training business.

Mo Mountain Mutts — a dog-walking and pet-training business in Skagway, Alaska — uses a bus to pick up their clients. (Mo Mountain Mutts)

The funny and adorable videos began racking up millions of views.

It's "really captured the hearts of a lot of people," said Thompson.

A clown car of emus

You can fit plenty of dogs on a bus, but how many baby emus can you get into a Honda Fit? At least five, it turns out.

Hilary Obermair found that out after her flock of five birds escaped from their pen on Annie Lake Road near Whitehorse in October. Her partner managed to round them up again, some distance away, and somehow wrestled the lanky young birds into the back of his car.

Five baby emus near Whitehorse piled out of a Honda Fit this week after getting a ride home. (Submitted)

A video shows the birds arriving back home, where they "waterfalled" out of the small car.

"Never underestimate a Fit, and check your fences," Obermair said.

The fox family next door

Yellowknife resident Lana de Bastiani discovered a different sort of animal quintet last spring, when she discovered a fox and its newborn kits had taken up residence under her neighbour's deck.

De Bastiani got to watch, and film, as the baby foxes — so young that they could barely jump from one step to the next — bumbled over leftover snow piles, using them as a ramp to try to crawl back to their mom on the deck.

A mother fox and her kits are denning under a deck in Yellowknife — and it's not the first time a fox family has moved in, says neighbour Lana de Bastiani. (Submitted by Lana de Bastiani)

De Bastiani and her neighbours lost some broccoli and carrots thanks to the animals' nighttime garden heists, but she wasn't about to lay out traps.

"We recognize this is their home, so we can't get rid of them."

The pistachio ice cream-loving bear

"You don't expect to ever see a bear as a guest in your living room," said Al Fozard of Whitehorse in June, after he woke early one morning to find just that — a cinnamon-coloured black bear, sitting in his living room, quietly gazing out the window.

The animal had made a huge mess, leading from the freezer drawer in the kitchen. It had enjoyed some whipped topping, and polished off a whole tub of pistachio ice cream. It also left a pile of poop in the living room.

A black bear wandering Al Fozard's property in Whitehorse's Mary Lake subdivision, June 2023. (Jan Stensson-Fozard)

Finding a bear in the house could be terrifying and tragic, but Fozard kept his wits about him and luckily managed to coax the animal out of the house without serious incident.

"You sort of like to see wildlife, but you don't really want to see wildlife that close-up," he said.

A muskox heads south

Darlene Cardinal also spotted a wild animal this year where it normally isn't, when she had to slam her brakes to avoid hitting a muskox.

The animals are typically found on the Arctic tundra and Arctic islands, but Cardinal spotted this one last month near her home in Fort Chipewyan, in northern Alberta — hundreds of kilometres from the species' usual turf.

"I was in shock because I couldn't believe, like, what's happening?" Cardinal said.

Darlene Cardinal started shooting video as soon as she spotted a muskox in Fort Chipewyan, Alta. (Submitted by Darlene Cardinal)

Muskox sightings in Alberta are rare, but they are not unheard of. Still, Cardinal quickly posted a video online and soon saw other people driving to the area.

"Everybody wanted to see the muskox," she said. "It's an exciting thing."

The 30,000-year-old 'brown blob'

Every year, animals make news in the Yukon — even ones that have been dead for millenia.

Miners are routinely finding Ice Age bones and fossils in the Klondike goldfields and in March, paleontologists decided to show off a find from a few years earlier: the preserved remains of an Arctic ground squirrel, estimated to be about 30,000 years old.

A mummified Arctic ground squirrel, found in the Yukon in 2018. (Government of Yukon)

It didn't look like much — one veterinarian who did X-rays on the carcass compared it to a "brown blob" — but to territorial paleontologist Grant Zazula, it was definitely exciting. He said that's partly because the species is still around today.

"Some people get really, really excited when they find that giant woolly mammoth leg or, you know, the big tusks or the big skulls. But for me, the Arctic ground squirrel fossils ... they're my favourites," Zazula said.