A team of Anchorage engineering firm employees looked out their office window Wednesday and saw a sight that’s not uncommon in Alaska – a moose walking through the park next door. It was about lunchtime, and this moose was at Cuddy Midtown Family Park, which is home to an oval-shaped ice skating track that had apparently been recently hot-mopped.

What started as a routine Alaskan experience – cameras out, of course – changed the course of their day slightly when they saw the moose slip and fall as it crossed the skating track, ending up on the snow in the middle of the rink.

“We watched her circle the rink, trying the ice in several places,” said Caity Kennedy, with DOWL, in an email. “After about two hours we decided to help.”

She says someone in the firm’s environmental engineering group called Fish and Game to get suggestions, while a group gathered at around 2:30 to come up with the best way to make a crossing. Yoga mats came up as the best suggestion, but the group scoured the building and cars for anything that could be useful on the long stretch of ice.

“We armed up with yoga mats, pieces of carpet, entryway mats, and dog towels to make a path,” Kennedy says, saying the group used just about all of it. The moose wouldn’t use the path for about 45 minutes, so then they moved the path to a corner they had seen the moose test several times, where it finally -- hesitantly -- crossed.

As the moose approaches, it tests the first mat, which slides a bit, but the moose regains its stance, before it’s able to inch along some of the rest of the path, and some ice, to cross the track and be on its way.