Halifax Mooseheads go wild cheering on a loose moose

Like the team's two bright young stars Jonathan Drouin and Nathan MacKinnon, the Halifax Mooseheads marketing department knows how to capitalize on their chances. Perhaps a story about a bull moose in "full rut" wandering into an urban area isn't ha-ha funny to animal lovers, but given their moniker, the Mooseheads could not not have fun with it while many people in Nova Scotia's capital city were distracted by the quest to bring Bullwinkle in safely.

The Mooseheads jokingly told their fans to give the 2½-year-old animal, who was sedated, directions to the arena for practice. Since a young male moose weighs about 500 pounds, perhaps they were looking for some toughness on defence?

And it just went on like this, art imitating life if you happen to remember the Murphy Brown episode where Murphy cracked, "What kind of news do they have in Canada, 'moose on on the loose?' "

Before long, the moose had (play along here) a Twitter account (@TheHRMMoose, with the bio "Just a Moose trying to make it big in the city"). While the adventurous antlered animal wondered about his civil rights as he lay "on the cold floor of this trailer," he warned his Moose brethren who sport skates and sticks to be really careful about being shot by a tranquilizer gun, in case they didn't learn that lesson from Will Ferrell in Old School.

If the Mooseheads don't get "Don't Tranq Me, Bro" T-shirts made, it will be tragic.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Contact him at neatesager@yahoo.ca and follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.