Introducing “Glenwinkle” the Northwoods moose

By Georgia Gietzen
Sun contributor

We’ve now owned Northwoods Hardware for 13 months, and in that time we’ve come to realize just how significant our moose is to our customers. Dee and I originally thought after closing on the purchase last July that we’d remove him, as neither of our families are hunters and we felt “bad” about the moose. But we soon realized in casual discussion that we would have many unhappy customers, and that kids “like” our moose.

Dee and I started looking at him differently. He’s enormous. He must have been a bull (we don’t know for sure but imagine the moose must have been a “he” because of his size) and he’s very regal in appearance. If we stand close he looks like he’s smiling at us. We were becoming “fond” of him. So, this winter when we remodeled our front end and painted the walls a bright sunny yellow we carefully took him down from his previous spot where he overlooked the large desk area, had a taxidermist come in to clean him, and decided to “relocate” him to a position of prominence near the front door. Now when people left Northwoods, he is there to say “goodbye” and “thanks for your business”. He looks quite handsome in his new location on our bright yellow wall.

Dee and I decided he needed a name. You always name something that you’ve become attached to. After all, we don’t call our dogs “dog” or our cats “cat”. And we didn’t want to continue to call him “moose”. So we decided to have a “name the moose contest” and let our customers choose the name.

We had over 80 names to choose from. The names came via our Facebook page, in person and by mail. We put all the names on a list and had our crew of 10 write down their top five picks. We then put those names on a list and whittled the names down to about 20. We looked at those names and there was one name that was on almost everyone’s list. And we loved it.

Of course our ownership team of four all grew up to the cartoon antics of Rocky and Bullwinkle — the moose we all remember most growing up. Very clever of Norm Wheeler to also think of Bullwinkle but substitute “Glen” for “Bull”. Henceforth the name “Glenwinkle”. It’s a happy name. It does our big moose justice. It’s got a “local” connection. It brings back happy memories of another moose and another time. And most importantly … it’s fun to say. We thank Norm and everyone else who submitted names. By the way, someone did submit the name “Norman”.