Bull elk makes sod roof home for a day

In his 20 years’ experience as an Idaho Fish and Game conservation officer in the Wood River Valley, Lee Frost has seen elk feed from ornamental vegetation, rip apart ranchers’ hay bales and even seen an elk get stuck in a basement. Before Friday, he had never seen one climb up on, and refuse to leave, a residential roof.

Throughout Friday morning, afternoon and evening, an approximately three-year-old bull elk remained on the snow-covered, sod rooftop of an East Fork home while Frost unsuccessfully attempted to coax it down.

The two-story home’s sloped roof reaches the ground at the rear of the home. The home is owned by Jeremy and Conrad Thomas, who were out of town when the incident occurred.

Frost explained how it happened:

An electric meter reader arrived at the Hyndman Court home late Friday morning, and when he walked around a corner of the sod-roofed dwelling, he was face to face with the elk. The elk was promptly frightened and ran to the back of the home and onto the roof. The meter reader ran in the opposite direction.

"He had a pretty defensible position," Frost said of the elk’s probable fear and instinct to reach safety.

Frost arrived on the scene around noon and proceeded to wait for the animal to climb down from the roof on its own, the best option for the animal and for the humans involved.

He waited, and he waited some more. He waited for two and a half hours, and the elk didn’t move. In fact, it laid down.

"He wasn’t hurting anything," Frost said, "but there was one big skylight in the roof."

Frost explained that he didn’t want to get the animal excited and running around because of the danger posed by the skylight and the edges of the roof.

After a failed attempt at coaxing the animal down by throwing snowballs at it and by making noise, Frost, with help from some neighbors and Forest Service official Joe Griffin, spread hay around on the ground to try to lure the bull away.

That didn’t work either.

At nightfall, Frost said, the bull was still on the roof. He, Griffin, and the neighbors decided to call it a day.

Saturday morning’s first light, however, shone on an empty sod roof, Frost said. During the night, the bull had made its way down on its own.

The elk was unharmed, Frost said, and there was no damage to the home.

He said this type of peculiar behavior from an elk is fairly common at this time of year, especially with the deep snows and cold temperatures.

He added that a few cow elk are and have been dying recently, due to starvation. Several dead cows were found in Lake Creek, Parker Gulch and Warm Springs areas.

"If things stay as they are, some more elk will certainly die," he said. "But we’re not anticipating any large numbers."