WATERVILLE -- Three moose lumbered across lawns and driveways off Upper Main Street early Wednesday, sending cats scurrying for cover and drawing people from their houses to gape.

The moose, drooling and puffing, stood on Johnson Heights as a cat raced across the road to find shelter under a porch. A black feline without a tail peered out of a living room window, its yellow eyes frozen on the moose.

Police dispatcher Sarah Bailey said just before 8 a.m. that several people called to report the moose, which had been wandering between Eustis Parkway, Johnson Heights and Roosevelt Avenue for several minutes.

They finally crossed a lawn on Johnson Heights and headed to Eustis through the Hospice Volunteers of Waterville Area parking lot.

"I had to look twice; I couldn't believe what I was seeing," said Debbie Sills, who works at Hospice, located at the corner of Main Street and Eustis Parkway.

Sills said she saw the three moose wandering into the Hospice Memorial Garden, which is being developed next to the parking lot. She yelled to Deb Thurston, Hospice's community outreach and education coordinator.

"I said, 'You're not going to believe what's in the driveway,'" Sills recalled.

The moose wandered across Eustis Parkway as cars beeped their horns and stopped and people got out of their vehicles. Sills and Thurston said the moose headed toward the back of the First Congregational Church -- too quickly for them to snap a photo.

Thurston said she has been on many expeditions to places such as Acadia National Park and Baxter State Park, but never was lucky enough to see a moose in the wild. When she moved to Waterville in the late 1980s, she saw a moose near the Waterville Public Library on Elm Street which had to be tranquilized.

"That was my first moose and these are the other three and I now can say I've seen four moose in Maine," she said.

Police got several calls about the moose, starting at 7:42 a.m. Officer Steve Brame traveled the area in his cruiser looking for them, but was unsuccessful.

"My intent was to get them shooed back into the woods if I could," he said.

Brame did not see them but he recalled seeing a moose and her calf a few years ago on Drummond Avenue.

"I heard them slopping through he swamp behind the old Humane Society on Drummond Avenue. That was back in 2003," he said.

Apparently Wednesday's moose were more law-abiding.

"They moved along without further incident," he said.

Amy Calder -- 861-9247

acalder@centralmaine.com