was asleep in the bedroom when the bear entered and started to maul her. She attempted to climb out the window but the bear clawed her legs so viciously, trying to drag her back in to the house that she bled to death in a matter of a few minutes. When the bear was finished, her legs looked as if they had been put through a shredding machine. It was surmised that the bear was attracted by the scent of a woman who was on her menstrual cycle. In fact, some parks agencies will not allow woman employees to go out into wild bear country during their period.
The fact that animals are more dangerous when they live in proximity to humans is not a surprise. More people obviously mean more incidents. Animals can display unusual characteristics, lose their normal fear of people, and people sometimes lose their sensibilities while experiencing an animal “event.” Heavily used parks are a good example. On a road trip through Yellowstone Park in Wyoming some years ago, there were several cars pulled over and a man was feeding a mother black bear through the window of his camper. Meanwhile, another man ran at the two cubs that accompanied the mother, attempting to snap a few pictures. The cubs bolted, crying in fear with the cameraman in hot pursuit. When the mother bear heard the cries of her two cubs she forgot about the handout and ran at the man with the camera, moving at almost twice the speed of the running man. Luckily, the man diverted an attack by climbing on top of a nearby car.
In Algonquin Provincial Park, where most animals, both large and small, have been subject to all manner of studies and surveys, one can view moose at any time of the day along the Highway 60 corridor that runs through the park. Again, with cars stopped on both sides of the road, a man was trying to photograph a moose calf while its mother, nearby, hackles raised on the back of her neck, paced nervously back and forth. Little did the man with the camera realize that a cow moose is a deadly threat. Take for example the case a few years ago in Alaska where a man was kicked to death by a cow moose protecting her calf — right in front of a public building, captured on film by an onlooker.
In March of 2005, a cow moose came into the yard and began licking the road salt off my truck that was parked in the driveway. I went outside to chase her off when she began tugging at the wiper blades with her teeth. I soon realized that it wasn’t interested in going anywhere. I did a little human-animal bonding test by inserting rice crackers I keep in the glovebox for my kids, into the side of the moose’s mouth. And that’s an interesting bit of moose trivia if you ever get the opportunity to hand-feed a moose; because of the size of their snout, they can’t take snacks from your palm like a horse. Moose have this strange lip thing going on, raised at the side in a kind of sardonic grin — a perfect place to shove rice crackers. She then followed me around the truck, nudging my shoulder for more crackers. I scratched her behind the ears and combed my fingers through her neck hair. I went back in the house, got my two young children, and placed them in the box of the truck so they could watch from a safe perch. When the cow nudged up beside my kids they were allowed to put their arms around its neck. I took a picture.
Now, when I look back at this episode, I think that even if this cow had been released from a wildlife sanctuary, it was a stupid thing for me to do. I rely on my instinct, maybe too much so; even though I had a generally good feeling about this cow moose and the somewhat secure location of my kids, I didn’t allow for the remote possibility that this cow moose might be a bit mercurial in nature. It did make for some interesting family photographs though.
Everybody has an animal tale they like to tell, and when a bunch of casual adventurers get together there’s always a vigorous competition about who has the best or most outrageous wild animal story. I’ll usually relax into the banter, listening to chronicles about chipmunks in the peanut butter jar, and the saga with the mouse building a nest in the bottom of the food pack, a couple of moose sightings and maybe a bear sniffing around a campsite. Then, when the stories thin out, it’s my call to step in.
Call it swagger, call it braggadocio, but I love telling this story because it’s so bizarre. And few people believe it when I tell them, anyway, so I’m more likely to be branded a liar than a braggart. Two years ago I received a frenzied phone call from my other neighbour down the road, claiming that a bull moose was rampaging in her backyard and attacking her husband’s tarped boat. Pat was alone in the house and had just enough time to place two calls — one to me and one to Tony at the sanctuary — before the moose tore up a trough of sod on the lawn and cut off the phone line! I drove my pickup truck to her house thinking this would be an easy task to carry out. I’d corral and drive the bull using my truck and force it down their back lane onto an open field near the Rosseau River and that would be the end of it. When I arrived, the bull had its antlers under the plastic boat tarp and was tugging at it as if sparring with another bull. It was literally dragging a one-ton trailered boat across the lawn. I pulled my truck in behind it and laid on the horn. The moose retreated from its fight with the boat and I was able to “herd” it down the laneway and out in to the field, exactly as planned. That was easy, I thought, but the natural world always has its peculiarities that challenge what you may think or believe to be true: Don’t believe everything you think.
On my way back up the laneway to the house, feeling good about my quick success, I saw the bull’s head reflected in my rearview mirror. It was actually trying to pass me! I parked my truck in Pat’s parking lot, got out, and stood with my back against the side of the garage by the back lawn. The moose now made wide circles on the lawn in front of me, trotting slowly, keeping an eye on my movements. Pat was standing near the backdoor of the house when Tony finally arrived and sized up the situation. It was October, rutting season, and bull moose have been known to attack oncoming trains and roll over the occasional car. Tony and I looked at each other and smiled nervously. Now what? Tony said that he’d just finished feeding the captive cow moose at the sanctuary and that he probably had her smell all over him. I certainly didn’t notice but the bull did. He abruptly stopped his circling, waved his head from side to side, drooled and grunted, then approached Tony with his head lowered to the ground. Tony remained motionless. The bull then sniffed Tony from head to foot, turned and looked at me, head still lowered, eyes red and glowering, and the hackles rising on the back of his neck. Shit, this doesn’t look good.
I have had enough contact with wild animals to know not to make eye contact. I quickly diverted my eyes but watched the bull’s movements closely and hoped it wouldn’t charge. I was wrong. With head still lowered it moved toward me, not at a run but it closed the distance between us in seconds. I also knew enough not to run. I kept my eyes glued on the bull’s antlers and the sharp multi-pointed spears of bone heading directly for my abdomen. I dug my feet into the turf and grabbed at the moose’s antlers. I had no other choice. The next few moments were terrifying, not knowing what was going to happen; I could be dead on my neighbour’s lawn in five minutes. Pat thought Tony and I were both going to be killed.
But the moose just toyed with me, tugging gently, lightly jerking with me while I held on, trying to keep the antlers from ramming into my belly. At least by holding on I could keep the points at a safe distance; but if he wanted to, he could propel me through the side of the garage. Instead, we sparred gently but the jerks were getting more aggressive. “Tony, I don’t like this situation,” I remember saying through pursed lips.
“I’ll try something,” Tony assured, and began walking down the laneway toward the river. It was brilliant. The bull pulled away and started to follow Tony down the hill, so close, in fact, that his head was touching Tony’s shoulder. I assured Tony that I would follow from a safe distance and watch, just in case the bull turned on him. But it didn’t; the moose followed Tony across the field, along the river, and through a marsh that led to the sanctuary almost a kilometre away. By the time I got back in my truck and drove down the road to the sanctuary, Tony had led the bull moose into the compound that held the cow.
This was not unusual characteristics displayed by a somewhat quasi-domesticated moose with a seasonal hormonal imbalance; I can testify with authority that the lure of female company can make men stupid. Tony assured me that this particular bull had not been a sanctuary moose. As for his behaviour, he was doing what comes naturally, based on instinct and olfactory sensations, not to say much for his choice of female companionship.
Tony did have the right aroma, and I had stationed myself as the competition for Tony. Regardless of the comic intonations of