For the past two weeks, Pamela Gardner has passed by a sick, young moose on her way to work each morning.

Gardner, who lives in the Athol area, said the same moose is in the same spot - about 25 feet off of Diagonal Road, which runs perpendicular to Highway 41 - when she drives home each night.

"I always pull of to the side of the road and look at him. He doesn't really spook too easily. I stop my car and roll down the window and talk to him," Gardner said. "I feel so sorry for him. He just stands there kind of eating some bushes."

The moose has white patches running down its back that Gardner said she initially thought was just hair.

"But getting a closer look, his hair is just gone," she said.

When Gardner called Fish and Game to report the sick creature, she said she was told that the moose was infested with ticks and that it would likely die.

"I don't know if there's anything anyone can do to help him," Gardner said. "All I know is that it's really sad, he looks awful."

Idaho Fish and Game wildlife conservation educator Phil Cooper confirmed that the small arachnids are to blame and said his agency has received a number of reports of moose dying from infestations.

"Others that are infected appear to be able to survive," Cooper said.

The ticks, commonly called "winter ticks" or "moose ticks" by biologists, are native to Idaho. Cooper said they can also be found on other hooved animals such as deer and elk.

"But never in the numbers or with the impact seen on moose," he added.

Winter ticks exist in the summer only as unhatched eggs in the soil. By autumn, the ticks hatch and crawl to the top of grass, waiting to latch onto any moose that walks by.

The young ticks then feed on the moose's blood during the winter and in early spring the fully-grown creatures mate. After mating the males die and the females drop from the moose to the soil, where they lay their eggs.

Tens of thousands of the moose ticks can live on the skin of a single moose, and Cooper said that Fish and Game is seeing more severe cases than usual.

"This is because the 2013-2014 winter was very mild," Cooper said. "Ticks that fell off moose that winter had a higher than normal survival rate because many dropped on bare ground rather than on snow."

Cooper added that with this winter being even milder, the agency expects to see even more moose either being infected or dying from infestation next year.