ANEROID, Sask. — An Edmonton woman says her toddler is tired, a little scratched up and sunburned but otherwise fine after he spent overnight in a muddy trench in southwestern Saskatchewan.
Keeley Moat and her family were visiting an aunt’s farm near Aneroid on Monday evening when her two-year-old son, Courtlund Barrington-Moss, wandered off.
She says she and her relatives looked in places Courtlund had been playing earlier and got more frantic when he didn’t turn up.
Moat says the night seemed to pass slowly and too quickly at the same time, as she became more and more anxious.
Shelby Layman, the deputy fire chief in nearby Ponteix, says some 60 volunteers were searching overnight with the help of sniffer dogs, helicopters, drones and powerful lights.
He says searchers on horseback found the boy in a hole around 9 a.m. after they heard him giggle.
Moat says she was in an off-road vehicle searching when someone ran up and told her they’d found her son.
When she saw him, he was relaxed and happy — and caked in mud.
“We kind of went for a little walk away from everybody so I could just hold him and give him hugs,” she said.
“I don’t think he bats an eye at it or even knows what happened, really.”
(Canadian Press)
