Tolkkinen: A happy ending for the ram on the lam and the horse in the forest

It’s been a good week for lost livestock of the north.

Not only was Bra-a-a-ad, the young ram on the lam, captured and brought to the safety of a farm pen near Two Harbors, but Taz, a horse who had gone AWOL in the Chippewa National Forest two months ago, was reunited with his Cloquet owner.

After escaping on Oct. 29, Brad led would-be rescuers on a merry chase from Two Harbors to Duluth, then to Proctor and west into Midway Township, where a rescuer tranquilized him on Tuesday.

“It is a huge relief,” said Kelsey Rogers, who had teamed up with fellow animal lover Shana Roberts to try to capture Brad. “He was lucky every day he didn’t encounter predators, a car or an unleashed dog. He had a good head on him, thankfully, and folks who cared.”

Sightings poured into their phones and on social media. He’d been spotted at a soccer field. Then in someone’s yard. Then at Brighton Beach. He toured the grounds of Glensheen mansion, where he managed to elude three police officers by scampering into a ravine.

Coyotes were known to live in that ravine. But Brad must have picked up a survival skill or two during his weeks-long adventure, because he was next spotted at the railyard in Proctor, a city just outside Duluth.

It’s an active railyard with heavy equipment and workers were concerned that he could get trapped or injured, said Proctor police officer Mike Bradley. They were unaware of his growing fame on social media and in the news, but they called the police, who tried Sunday and Monday to corral Brad with the help of the railyard workers.

But dang, give that sheep a football and recruit him for the Vikings, because once again he evaded his pursuers. He ran from them and crawled under a stationary railcar before wriggling out the other side and booking it toward the woods.

“He was very resourceful,” Bradley said.

On Tuesday, a veterinarian was able to tranquilize Brad and return him to his original owner, Ryan Osvold of Carlton.

Brad’s rescue isn’t the only cause for celebration in the north country. On Friday, Taz, a 23-year-old Arabian gelding, wandered out of the Chippewa National Forest after going missing nearly two months earlier.

“I had almost given up hope,” his owner, Anne Gullion, said on Facebook.

In September, she had been camping with Taz at the Cut Foot Sioux Horse Camp in Itasca County when he disappeared from his picket line. They couldn’t find any tracks, and searchers on ATVs and horseback couldn’t find him. For two months, people in the Grand Rapids area have been waiting for news.

On Friday, Taz walked into Pine Grove Lodge on Sand Lake, almost eight miles from where he had gone missing.

Resort owner Shawn Wahlstrom heard that the horse had been spotted nearby so he was keeping an eye out for it when it walked right in front of his garage.

“I said, ‘No way.’” Wahlstrom called DNR Conservation Officer Mike Fairbanks and tried not to startle the horse, who was skinny and had an obvious infection. But then Wahlstrom stepped on a stick. The horse spooked and began to trot down the driveway, so Wahlstrom tried to calm it by talking to it gently. Fortunately, officers arrived pretty quickly with a rope and were able to coax Taz to them by rattling some rocks in a container, which apparently sounded like grain to the hungry animal.

Like Brad, Taz survived untold misadventures while loose. Not only does Wahlstrom sometimes hear wolves howling at night, but deer hunters were out with their firearms. The unseasonably warm weather with open water no doubt helped him survive.

“The horse has been pretty lucky,” Wahlstrom said.

There. Two happy endings for two amazing animals, thanks to their two-legged friends who never gave up hope.