Adios Moose and Squirrel

Rocky and Bullwinkle creator Alexander Anderson Jr has died at the age of 90.

The animation artist spent his last days at an assisted living facility in Pebble Beach, California where he had been living with Alzheimer’s disease.

He was born back in September 1920 in Berkeley, Calif. and attended the California School for Fine Arts in San Francisco and University of California at Berkeley and during the war he worked as a Navy spy.

Anderson honed his animation chops at Terrytoons, the New York studio that created "Mighty Mouse," "Heckel and Jeckel," "Tom Terrific" and "Deputy Dawg," working with his uncle Paul Terry.

In 1948, Anderson joined forces with childhood friend Jay Ward creating such landmark television cartoons as "Crusader Rabbit," "Dudley Do-Right," and the zany Cold War characters of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, his sidekick Bullwinkle the Moose, and crafty Russian spies Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale.

His main achievement is definitely Rocky and Bullwinkle, which remains one of the most recognized cartoon series in the world, and came to life following a dream that Anderson had in which he was playing poker with a moose.