Something Different

Here is a story from my time working with moose in Alaska in which I recall an encounter with an enraged moose.

It was summer, after the calving season, and this day started out as just another damp, gray morning except for the odd distant cries. I really wasn't sure I'd heard anything, but maybe something was happening in one of the fifteen acre pens down the road. A mud hole had formed there and I wondered if it was possible a moose could get stuck in it. Curious, I tugged on my Xtratufs, jacket, cap, and left my cozy cabin. 

It was drizzling and the trail was muddy from days of rain. The cries were plaintive, getting louder.  

Something stopped me cold. 

I saw the one I called Psycho Moose. A smallish, fine boned moose with a thin, bony nose. She hated people, was known to attack without provocation and at the moment she was extremely agitated about something. I was in the pen with her, a dangerous place to be, but as yet unnoticed. 

I saw she wasn't stuck in the mud at all. She was frantically pacing the fence line with two small calves in tow. That was strange because she had given birth to only one calf that year and it was, I clearly saw, on the wrong side of the fence! How they became so separated is still a mystery, considering now this moose’s devotion to her calf. Soft cries and a stirring in the trees at the edge of the clearing revealed the distressed mother of the confused twins. 

Somehow Psycho Moose had lost her calf but she was not to be without. She had kidnapped another moose's calves! 

She was desperate and I needed to get out of that pen before she discovered me. I turned back to the gate, but running in the slick mud wearing sloppy rubber boots was not easy. I slipped and fell flat on my face, mud covered, head to toe. 

There is something I hate about mud, even today. 

But I was younger and game and sprang up like a bop-a-doll, fully expecting the blows of moose hooves to knock me flat again. I reached the corner of the pen and scrambled over the tall hog wire fence. If memory serves correctly it was seven or eight feet high. More than a hop, skip and jump for sure.

Climbing fences is a good way to rip your pants, a silly thought as I flew over. But I was safe. For the moment. How was I to get the calf back before a bear killed it, and then return the twins to their rightful mother?

 I ended up on the same side of the fence as the lone calf and thought to herd her to an open gate and then to the pen where she could find her mother. A good plan, but Psycho Moose saw me now and did not consider me a savior. If she would stay calm there was a chance of pulling this trick off, but as it turned out she would not cooperate. The furious moose swung back and forth along the fence, charging wildly, doing her best to protect the calf. I’m not sure what I was thinking as I approached the calf, but now I wonder if  even a bear would risk challenging such a moose. 

It was all too frightening for the little calf. She startled, running straight towards a low four wire fence attached at a right angle to the tall hog wire fence that was the only thing between us and her mother. She ran smack into that low fence and flipped over it. With thin legs entangled in the wire, hanging upside down, she was helpless. Time stopped for a moment. 

I was horrified. 

The moose was horrified.

There was no turning back. The calf must be rescued.

The moose, just inches away, was steaming mad, and she was looking at me! Screaming, eyes bulging, rearing up, crashing against the fence, she would kill me given half a chance. I do recall that I thought about dying at the hooves of this maniacal moose as I frantically pulled at the wires to free the struggling calf before the fence collapsed and the enraged moose came crashing through. Your life sort of flashes by.

But suddenly the calf was free, all legs, loping towards the open gate! 

The mother moose forgot me, now guiding her beloved to the opening. The twins were abandoned, no longer needed. Their real mother left the safety of the trees to retrieve them. 

I breathed a sigh of relief as the world came right again. It was not my day to die after all.