“He was just laying flat down…just completely flat.”

So said Leonard Wendinger of the moose from Northwoods that had taken up temporary residence in the backyard of his Sleepy Eye home in Minnesota. He found the moose dead on Thursday morning after wandering hundreds of miles to get from its own home to Wendinger’s many days prior.

The animal, which stood about seven feet tall, feasted on apples from a tree in the yard and looked healthy.

“Yeah, he cleaned it up. High on the branches and everything. They were down [the branches]. It was so heavy from apples that bent way down,” Wendinger said. “Until last night, that one trip, it never got closer than that apple tree.”

He said for the first few days, the moose kept its distance from the house. Tracks in the snow provided insight into the animal’s movements. The moose left the property for a few days last weekend but returned on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the moose moved in much closer to the Wendingers’ house.

“It never came up that close to the house. He could have come up on the porch. Like one of our daughter’s says, pretty soon it will be up on the porch like a dog, sleeping,” Verna, Leonard’s wife, lightheartedly remarked.

Verna said the family had become fond of the long-legged interloper and said they would miss it.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources concluded that the animal did not show evidence of being hit by a car or shot, but a necropsy is pending at the University of Minnesota’s veterinary laboratory. The cause of death will be revealed in a few weeks.