'Do not let moose lick your car.'



I saw that the other day. I wonder how, exactly, they expect people to stop the moose. My one vehicular encounter with a moose was on a dark back road at night in Maine. Came around a corner and he was just standing there in the road. I slammed on the brakes and sat there awhile. Moose didnā€™t move. I honked, hoping to scare him off the road. He just gave me a look that very clearly said ā€œDo that again, bub, and youā€™ll regret it.ā€

Finally after about 5 minutes he ambled off into the woods. I think if heā€™d wanted to lick my car, there wouldnā€™t be much of anything I could do to prevent it.

2 Likes

Iā€™m not sure why I should worry about moose licks. Moose kicks, yes, Iā€™ll worry about that. I mean, I would, if I lived anywhere near moose. In my suburban neighborhood, we just have black bears and copperheads. Oh, and deer. Way too many deer.

I went to summer camp in Allegany State Park (yes, that is the correct spelling, no matter what spellcheck and Pennsylvanians say) Friday nightwe had boxing matched between campers at the far end of the camp from the cabins.

I nuck back to uur cabin to get a Hershey bar and was walking back to the matches eating the bar and looking up at the Milkey Way that was flowing across the night sky like a river when I walked into the side of a huge Black bear that was coming down to browse in the mess hall garbage cans.

We both grunted and took off in different directions.

The next week, that same bear was pawing through the garbage, one of our consolers was on the low roof at the rear of the mess hall and anted a picture of the bear. This was in the 1940s and the camers needed a very bright flash bulb. He wanted the Bear looking up at him so he whistled and set off the flash in the bears eyes. The bear made one swipe at his arm and we could see the white of the bone in his arm before the blood blossomed.

he wrapped his arm in towels and threw him in the back of the camp station wagon and took him to the nearest hospital. We never heard about how he was doing.

Deer are the (larger than insect, non-human) animals that cause the most fatalities, most through collisions with car. My alumni magazine reported a fatality of a guy on a bicycle who collided with one. Some have speculated that re-introducing wolves would result in fewer total human fatalities (but vastly increased deer casualties).

It started out as a Native word, not spelt in any language. Itā€™s unsurprising there is more than 1 spelling in English. I used to live out that way. We spelt the airline ā€˜All agonyā€™.

I never ran into one, but all my encounters ended up with the bear running away as fast as he could, even one chowing down on a cow corpse. Donā€™t expect a brown bear to be so shy.

No, If I went to camp where there were grizzly bears I would have likely not survived such a an encounter.

Black bears are usually dangerous if the spend too much time around people which is why the parks no longer have dumps where people can circle their cars and hand feed bears candy and honey like they did when I was a child.

Has anyone ever heard of corduroy roads? During the depression the CCC built many structures in the park and ā€œimprovedā€ the dirt roads by splitting logs and burying them in the dirt to give a flat surface to drive on. This worked about as well as you would expect in a place that gets a lot of rain and snow and most of the logs wound up in their most stable position, which was flat side down. Then they were blacktopped over giving a surface much like driving across the wales of corduroy.

220px-Bullwinke_J._Moose

1 Like

Not in most areas of the Northeast. There is not enough unpopulated space to support wolves without significant human interaction. Whenever coyotes move into an area, outdoor pets tend to disappear, and they are solitary animals. A pack of wolves is an entirely different matter. They are very efficient at thinning any herd they come in contact with.

after reading the title the first time, I instinctively went back and reread it in a Russian accentā€¦ ā€œDo not let moose lick carā€

:rofl: :rofl:

2 Likes

I mean, I guess you could say please, doubt the moose would care, though!
:laughing:

1 Like

Moose are not afraid of people and they are a very dangerous animal that could easily kill you. My closest encounter with a Moose scared the crap out of me. I was fertilizing my lawn after work one day just before dusk. Iā€™m going back and forth across lawn. On one pass I turn around and right behind me is a Moose. I froze as he just walked pass to the graze on the flowers of one of my apple trees. That is one big animal. At first I thought it was a horse. Iā€™m 6ā€™3 and it was several inches taller then me.

Moose rut is the most dangerous time, although anything that large is always dangerous. I understand that male moose are nuts with hormones and will attack most anything. The article I read said the first two weeks of October.

I grew up in Duluth MN in the 50ā€™s. It seemed the favorite moose pictures in the news were ones with the antlers caught in a clothesline dragging clothes behind them.

Any housewives chase the moose with a broom to get their clothes back?

3 Likes

[quote="jtsanders,
Any housewives chase the moose with a broom to get their clothes back?

I can see it now with the moose laughing all the way.

1 Like

Actually, thatā€™s a serious question. My brother-in-law used to live in Coastal South Carolina. There was a woman in a suburban development that was in the front yard sweeping the sidewalk. She noticed a rather large alligator on the driveway, and tried to shoo it away by swatting it on the snout with her broom. The gator backed into the garage until it wedged under the back of her car. Then it got mad, stood up, lifting the back end of the car off the ground, and let out a big roar. She decided it was time to get help. I believe that animal control was able to get the alligator out and back to the river safely without any humans getting hurt. People do strange things sometimes.

1 Like

I have lived in Florida for quite a few yearā€™s and have seen and heard of many people doing strange and really stupid things around gatorā€™s it is a wonder more people donā€™t get killed by gatorā€™s.

One trip went through Alligator alley in FL., did not see any alligators, decided to feed the sea gulls some crackers, that was a mistake, those birds were crazy.

1 Like

I thinkI lived here about six months beforeI saw a wild gator (now Iā€™m dating oneā€¦lol), but that was 1977. Lots more around now, same with manatees. Yep, never feed gulls or grackles.

1 Like

If there are more alligators that means there is more food. More likely, land that used to be just for wildlife is now inhabited by people too.

1 Like