A moose walked into an Alaska hospital and started snacking on the potted plants. A local biologist says it's 'typical moose behavior.'

• A moose walked into the lobby of an Alaska hospital and started munching on the potted plants.
• Hospital security was able to escort the animal back outside safely, where it took a post-lunch nap.

Photos show a moose walking right through the automatic sliding doors of an Alaska hospital and munching on the potted plants in the lobby.

Randy Hughes, the head of security at Providence Health Park, said it was "a pretty mellow day" Thursday until he got a surprising call that "a moose had entered into the facility."

Hughes' team rushed to the hospital lobby, where the moose — estimated to be about a year old — was casually grazing on some plants as staff and patients gathered to watch from a distance.

"It was quite exciting," Hughes told Insider, "Everybody was calm and cooperative and just admiring the wildlife in our lobby, eating our plants."

Hughes and his team figured out a game plan for how to get the moose back outside.

But meanwhile, he said, "some people just ignored the fact that we even had a moose our lobby and kept coming in. They were trying to get to their appointments."

He said that made it a challenge: "A little bit of traffic control, if you will."

But after about 15 minutes, his team was able to corral the moose back out through the sliding doors safely.

After the security team successfully lured the moose outside, onlookers cheered. Then, the moose curled up in a patch of snow outside by another hospital building and took a nap.

The plants also made it out of the encounter mostly unscathed — Hughes said they won't need to be replaced.

Though it was a thrilling day for hospital staff, Cory Stantorf, a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said this is actually just "typical moose behavior."

"For whatever reason, if there's a gate or a door and they can walk through it, they seem to enjoy walking through it, even if they don't really know what's on the other side," Stantorf told Insider.

Stantorf also explained that snowy Alaska winters can be especially brutal for moose, since nutritional sources of food like green leaves are harder to find.

"Every step for a moose in winter is a step closer to death," Stantorf said. "So right now they're looking for any forage, anything with any sort of nutritional value. And that might be part of why this young moose decided to walk through the door."

Hughes said the same moose was spotted around the hospital campus for a while, "just kind of hanging out."

He speculated that "it feels safe here, probably, from any other predators right now."