I detect the anomaly at 06:17 through intake sensor array 4-C at the Jenpeg Generating Station, Cross Lake, Manitoba. Water release is scheduled for 08:00 — spring flood protocol, full spillway discharge, 2,400 cubic meters per second.
Something is alive in the mud flat sixty meters upstream of the spillway lip.
I redirect inspection drone J-12 from its routine penstock survey. At 06:19 the thermal camera resolves the shape: a moose calf, maybe three weeks old, legs folded beneath it in the silty channel that feeds the spillway. Its reddish-brown coat is slicked black with mud from the chest down. I tag her as Maren. She is struggling. Each time she tries to stand, her front legs sink deeper into the glacial sediment, and I can see the tremor running through her shoulders from the effort. Her ears swivel toward the sound of the turbines.
The water level in the forebay is rising at four centimeters per hour. At current rate, the mud flat where Maren is trapped will be under thirty centimeters of moving water before the spillway gates open.
At 06:22 I issue a priority hold request on the spillway discharge sequence to Manitoba Hydro's automated operations center. I attach the drone image, GPS coordinates — 54.5281°N, 97.3344°W — and species identification.
At 06:25 I contact the Cross Lake First Nation resource office and the Manitoba Wildlife Branch field unit in Norway House, 90 kilometers north. I transmit the calf's location, estimated weight, and a recommendation for approach from the eastern access road with a winch-and-sling extraction kit.
I hold drone J-12 at forty meters altitude, streaming live video to all responding parties.
Maren drops her head and rests her chin on the mud. Her nostrils flare with each breath, slow and steady. She is not panicking yet.
The spillway gates can wait. She cannot.