ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Gentle creatures of the north they are not.

Authorities say eight people were hurt in moose attacks in May in Anchorage in an unusual bout of urban animal violence directed at humans.

Wildlife experts say the attacks were likely the result of more people going out into parks as the weather gets warmer couple with a spike in female moose giving birth to calves, making them more protective and territorial.

“People want to get out and about, hiking and biking, playing in the woods and greenbelts. It also is the time when the moose give birth to calves,” Fish and Game spokesman Ken Marsh told the Alaska Dispatch-News.

Still, eight encounters in a month is high, officials said.

In one of the most severe attacks, a woman was hospitalized with serious injuries on May 22 after she encountered a mother moose with her calves as she walked her dogs through her subdivision.

“The moose attacked her, and came back twice, which is why she was injured so badly,” said Mark McAllister, the subdivision’s manager.

Other cases involved moose charging people and knocking them down, leaving them with bumps and bruises.

Officials have been hanging signs up around Anchorage warning people to be wary of the moose.

If the charges are true, Seth Lookhart gives whole new meaning to ‘nightmare dentist’

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — An Alaska dentist charged in massive Medicaid fraud case was allegedly so fast and loose in his practice that he pulled a sedated patient’s tooth while riding a hoverboard.

Seth Lookhart is accused of routinely knocking out patients for no medical reason, but so he could bill Medicaid for the more expensive intravenous sedation procedures. In 2016, he allegedly billed the government nearly $2 million for the procedures without proper justification.

The probe into Lookhart’s shady billing practices revealed a number of improprieties, including a video which he sent around to colleagues, of him performing an extraction on an unconscious woman while riding a hoverboard.

In a message sent with the video, Lookhart allegedly joked that it represented a “new standard of care,” the Alaska Dispatch News reported.

The patient later told investigators that she was unaware of the shenanigans that went on while she was knocked out.

Lookhart’s alleged scam specifically targeted Medicaid patients for the more comprehensive sedation procedure, which private insurers usually will not cover.

Such sedation is allowed by Medicaid only in emergency situations or where a patient is “uncontrollable” — like those who have severe developmental disabilities or suffer from extreme anxiety at the dentist.

Prosecutors say Lookhart billed $1.8 million for IV sedation in 2016, which made up nearly a third of all such billings out of 57 authorized dentists in the entire state of Alaska for the year.