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Moose turds, once dried, are shellacked and made into jewelry. While stationed in Alaska I purchase necklaces and ear rings. There packaging proudly announced "Made in Alaska by Moose!"

I was inspecting the DEW Line and one of my NCO found some "raw" moose urds while fishing along the Nenanna river in Fairbanks. When we returned to the radar sites up north we pulled a prank that still echos throught the annals of DEW Line practical jokes.

I've told this story before but what the hey....!

Part of our radar inspection routine was to shut down the klystron and inspect the cooling system. The klystron was the the device that generated the 5 Mega Watts of radar energy for the surveillance radar. This device was the size of a large walk - in refreigerator. The interior chamber is what generated the RF energy. To shut down the radar required NORAD permission. The radar tech would receive permission from NORAD and would then go to the power panel to turn off the electricity. He was out of sight of my RADAR Tech who quickly opened the door and threw some moose turds into the Klystron. He then closed the door and when the DEW Line tech opened the door he noted that there was animal droppings in the klystron!

At lunch we had our preliminary debrief on the critical items noted during our morning inspections. There was only one critical item, the animal droppings. The site manager, already apprised of our finding, announced that he had already contacted the office in Fairbanks and requested traps and bait to clean out the klystron, (as if any animal could survive in that RF environment! I was biting the inside of my lip as I sternly announced that I had inspected the offending droppings and that the Site manager had made an "offal mistake". The dropping were ,OBVIOUSLY MOOSE TURDS. I asked him how a moose had gotten into his klystron, my troops broke out laughing and then we asked if he had an elephant in his pajamas, (old Groucho Marx joke) and the site manager knew he had been had.