The Animals

O.K. nature lovers, you asked for it. Animals we’ve met on our travels – but not the rock and roll kind! But before I get into that, and backtracking to the sandwich musings in my last post; has anyone seen the David Hasselhof video on You Tube? It’s not really a pretty example of sandwich eating.

Back to Nature: Last year, during the summer, the big news in our town, which is something of a conservation area, a story appeared in the local newspaper. Seems one of the good ol’ boys from the fire department was sitting on a lawn chair in his back yard reading the Sunday paper when his wife yelled out to him (what he thought) was “Beer, honey?” Turned out she was yelling “Bear, honey!” Yep, there was a big one just sitting, calmly watching him. Needless to say there were several other sightings and eventually Bruin was tranquilized, captured and shipped to somewhere less populated.

In my yard I’ve seen a trio of coyotes – you can always tell them because they look like mangy German Shepherds (Alsations) but it’s their stealthy gait that gives them away. I once had a lone one leading my car down the drive. Then there are wild turkeys, of which I’ve sometimes seen 15 or so, behind my house. They are pretty confident and not too skittish. If you get too close to a male though, he might fly at you. Watch out, there are a couple of vicious barbs or spurs on his legs, which he’ll use on you.

It turns out that I’m one of the few to have seen a mountain lion in our area. It was incredible. I saw him at springtime, alone in a field, grooming himself, in a shaft of sunlight. It was magical. I stopped the car, got out and observed him for about 10 minutes. He could obviously see me, since I was only about 20 metres away. I guess he was more intent on enjoying the early spring sun. An instance like this needs reporting to the Audubon Society. Every region in the States, has a local office and they track and keep records of animals and migrations etc.

The bald eagle has made a triumphant return to our corner of the state and I’ve seen a couple. It’s easy to see why it was picked as the national symbol – majestic creatures. I’ve seen them near fast flowing rivers and in trees on farmland.

The close encounter of the animal kind to beat all others was the one we had with a full grown male moose which charged at our car out of the forest in Maine, at dusk, on a lonely road. We later estimated he was doing about 40 mph. We’d decided to drive through the center of the state to get to Quebec. There are plenty of signs warning you of moose but I didn’t think too much of them until we made impact. I believe it was the car headlights that got him excited. I was in the passenger seat and all I could remember was the sound of the impact and watching this huge animal (3 metres at the shoulders) sailing over us. We were in a Subaru Outback, which is a relatively low 4 wheel drive car. Thank God, because anything larger would have taken the full impact, and have been stopped dead in it’s tracks. In fact the moose stomped on the roof of the car and smashed the windshield and side mirrors.

This was a truly shocking event. The sheer size of the animal’s head with it’s giant rack of antlers (2 metres) is what I’ll always remember seeing through the windshield, as it sailed over us. However, after calming down a little and punching out the window so that we could see, we headed down the hill very cautiously towards this small town (the first signs of life we’d seen in over and hour.) Lo’ and behold there was a police car parked sideways to the road, with a policeman leaning out. Thank the Lord; help was right there, or so it seemed. But as we pulled alongside the cruiser, we realized that it was actually a manequinn dressed in a police uniform. Now we’re really in the twilight zone, literally freaking out, when up drives a forest ranger with the name plate Rick on his shirt (I kid you not). Ranger Rick reassured us, telling us that the town budget didn’t allow for an actual human police officer to slow speeders down, so they used the dummy instead. Apparently it fooled most folks, us included. He offered to take us to a hotel and told us that he’d literally just come back from taking a lady to the hospital. She’d also hit a moose but had suffered broken ribs – “happens all the time round here,” he told us.

Needless to say, we had to stay in this little town for 3 days while they patched the car up well enough to make the drive home and of course we heard many more moose tales from the locals. Seems that every local family has had at least one encounter (and not a few fatalities) from hitting these prehistoric deer.

These days, I have a fascination with the creatures and sometimes have dreams about them. You can see all sorts of footage on YouTube including encounters between bear and moose. That’s close enough for me, I think. We get loads of deer round our way and they seem quite benign, even though I’ve hit them (or been hit) on at least two occasions.

I once heard a weird story of someone driving in a convertible. He ended up with a deer inside on the passenger seat, thrashing around next to him. Don’t laugh. It was only after he’d collided with it, of course. The poor creature was thrown over the hood and landed inside (the top was down at the time). I can’t remember how the situation resolved itself. The worst thing with deer is these tiny deer ticks they carry, which cause an affliction called Lyme Disease. There are 3 stages to the disease resulting in loss of memory and serious motor and neurological disorders. I’ve contracted it twice, but again, that’s another story.