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 itsmost elusive characters. They don't giveinterviews, hold news conferences, issuestatements, 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 encounterlast January was rare indeed.

The Fort Simpson, N.W.T., man was driving towardWrigley when he spotted whathe 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.

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 overthe border, in Skagway, Alaska, and also involveda video of a groupof 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 specializedbus around town, picking up animalssigned up for their dog-walking and pet-training business.

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

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

A clown car of emus

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

Hilary Obermair found that out afterher 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.

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 familynext door

Yellowknife residentLana de Bastianidiscovered a different sort of animal quintet last spring, whenshe discovered a fox and itsnewborn 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 barelyjump from one step to the next bumbled over leftoversnow piles, using them as a ramp to try to crawl back to their momonthe deck.

De Bastianiand her neighbours lost somebroccoli 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,"saidAl 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 madea huge mess, leading from the freezer drawer in thekitchen. 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.

Finding a bear in the house could beterrifying and tragic, butFozardkept 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?" Cardinalsaid.

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: thepreserved remains of an Arctic ground squirrel, estimated to be about 30,000 years old.

It didn't look likemuch one veterinarian whodid 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 squirrelfossils ... they're my favourites," Zazula said.