Moose and calf surprise vacationers in Sundridge

A family from Waterloo is heading home from their northern Ontario cottage after making some core memories with wildlife.

The Ninaber family was enjoying an evening at their cottage on Bernard Lake near Sundridge when a mother moose and her calf wandered out of the water.

“I was immediately almost starstruck -- like, what am I seeing in real time?” Jessica Ninaber told CTV News in an interview Wednesday from their cottage.

Jessica said she saw the larger moose first and started recording with her cellphone. She called her husband, Jeremy, who had been swimming about 20 feet from shore.

“You would think you’d see a moose coming from a mile away, right? They’re a massive creature,” said Jeremy.

“To see them in the wild, let alone coming into your backyard like that, I mean, it doesn’t happen for a lot of people -- so we’re pretty grateful for that.”

At the time, Jessica told her mother to wake up the couple’s two older children, who are almost seven and five. The children were in their pajamas when they came outside to check out the wildlife first-hand.

The couple’s two younger children stayed asleep.

“Oh, they talked about it non-stop,” Jeremy said, of the two who got to see the animals.

“The funniest thing is that when our second youngest woke up, they’re trying to tell him about the moose and he was like ‘What? What do you mean there was a moose in our yard?’”

Both Jessica and Jeremy call it a surreal experience the family won’t soon forget.

‘It was so magical’

“It was so magical,” Jessica said.

“You have the sunset and also the moose in between and I’m like, ‘How did this happen?’ It just really catches you off guard, you’re not expecting that,” Jeremy said.

After posting the video to their social media feed, the couple said the response has been positive, with many commenting that the animals recognized a fellow mom in Jessica and knew they were in a safe place.

“It was really special, like people don’t just see moose on the lake,” she said.

The couple has owned the Sundridge-area cottage for the past five years.

“There weren’t moose sightings on the listing when we purchased it,” Jessica joked, while Jeremy added that it’s “a core memory that just got locked in.”