Yellowknife (May 25/05) - With his lips wrapped tightly around a bottle of condensed milk, Chance looks anything but famous resting on a bed of woodchips at the Great Slave Animal Hospital in Yellowknife.

But the baby muskox, who was discovered near-death on the Nunavut tundra earlier this month, has become an international star since his remarkable journey first grabbed headlines last week.

Found near death on the Nunavut tundra, Chance stopped briefly in Yellowknife en route to a Yukon nature preserve.

The 30-pound, knee-high muskox made a brief stopover in the capital last week en route to a wildlife reserve in the Yukon.

"Considering everything that has happened... he is doing very well," said veterinarian Tom Pisz, who examined Chance last Thursday evening. "He is lucky to be alive."

Airline workers found Chance, his umbilical cord still attached, about one kilometre outside of Cambridge Bay. They fruitlessly searched the tundra for his mother and herd, before bringing the stricken animal back to town.

He spent the next two weeks living in an airport hangar where he was dubbed Chance by rescuers.

"He desperately wanted to live," said Joann Laserich, who helped nurse the scrawny muskox back to health.

The intervention undoubtedly saved his life, Pisz said. Without a mother, Chance would have probably died within about 12 hours.

"Newborns need to feed every three or four hours, and all they can eat is milk," he said.

"His chance of survival in the wild would be almost non-existent."

Chance spent most of his Yellowknife visit sleeping with a white teddy bear, one cage over from an unimpressed tabby-cat.

Aside from a bout of diarrhea, which Pisz believes was likely the result of stress and dehydration, Chance was in good condition. Staff fitted him with an intravenous line and fed him a steady diet of condensed milk because the clinic did not have specially designed muskox formula on hand.

"This is only the second time in 18 years I have treated a muskox," Pisz said with a laugh.

"So we had to make do."

Despite the foreign surroundings, Chance ventured outside of his cage Thursday evening and even suckled the finger of a photographer. "At this age, he thinks everyone is his mother," Pisz said with a laugh.

After his stopover in Yellowknife, Chance was flown to the Yukon Wildlife Preserve 25 kilometres outside of Whitehorse, where he promptly guzzled a bottle of formula in about 10 seconds.

"I have never seen a calf drink like that," said sanctuary executive director Carolyn Thorne with a laugh. "He is doing really great."

Chance will spend the next several days in quarantine Once fully weaned, he will join muskoxen who roam a 700-acre preserve.