The Moose Incident

I really did want to see a moose. The same way a kid goes to a circus and says, "Daddy, I want to see the elephants!", I wanted to see a moose. All in all, I've been slightly disappointed with Canada's big game on this trip. No mountain goats in the Rockies, no bears in Northern Ontario, and no moose in Newfoundland. Well, I shouldn't say that. My time here hasn't been entirely devoid of moose:

Day One: Ate fresh moose steak, fried up with onions. This was at Limbert 's (the hunting guide) place, and it was delicious.

Day Two: Saw a couple of fellows riding on an ATV track. They honked and waved cheerfully at me, pointing to the sideways carcass of a freshly shot moose strapped on the back.

Day Three: Cycling towards Gros Morne National Park, I looked upon a cow (female moose) lying in the ditch beside the highway. Since there was no movement, I was able to deduce three things: first of all she was dead, secondly she was killed by a motor vehicle, and lastly she met her demise recently (likely within the last 24 hours) since there was no foul aroma. Morbid as it was, I hopped off my bike and wandered round the poor ol' girl a few times, marveling at her enormous beauty.

Day Four: Quartered moose in back of pickup truck spotted at Irving Gas Station.

Day Five, AKA, The Moose Incident!
Ok, so I was cycling out of Deer Lake on the TCH towards St. John's. Now, for those of you who are not residents of Newfoundland or Labrador, I recommend you take a look on google maps just to see how little settlement there is near the highway. Fact: there are only three cities in Newfoundland. Lots of small towns in between, but most of them are not on the highway, they're on the coastline. So evening was coming and I was still a few km from the next junction, which was still 10 km from the next town. I could have pushed on, except that highway had begun to run alongside a little brook and it was tempting me to come and dip my feet in. So I threw my bike to the side, scrambling down the slope and pushing flimsy birch out of my way until I came out at the bubbling water of Indian Brook.

I took off my shoes and tippie toed into the water (which was freezing), and found a nice flat rock to stand on and watch the twigs float by. Peace and serenity. Once my feet began to loose feeling, I clumsily wobbled out of the water and sat on a fallen truck, my legs dangling. I noted that the tree had been cut down by beavers: the gnaw marks on both the stump and the dettached trunk were pretty obvious. Gazing up through the yellow leaves over my head, I could see the sun was getting pretty low in the sky. By this point, I had wasted enough time to know that if I continued on I'd be racing again time to make it civilization before sunset. But who needs civilization anyways? I love people, but the brook was just calling to me, "meeeeaaaaaggghhhhaannnnnnnn...yoooouuu ccccaaaannn jjjjuuuuuusssst sssslllleeeeeeeepppp oooonnnn mmmyyy ssshhhhooooooooorreee"

And that's what I did. I wandered back up to my bike and dragged it down the slope, finding a nice thick tree to lean it up against. I looked around for a flat spot for my tent, threw it up and unrolled my sleeping map. Then I returned to my fallen birch tree and sat down to read until it the light from the sun faded entirely.

That night an icy frost covered the ground, but that's a side note. I noticed that when I set up my tent, the flat spot that I had chosen seemed to be part of a path winding alongside the brook. There was no human refuse, except for an old paddle boat with peeling blue paint and shrubs growing over it. I didn't really think much of this pseudo path with trampled branches, figuring maybe folks used to come down here to fish or something like that. I didn't even consider that maybe, perhaps, the path was created and used by animals, not humans.

Tucked into my sleeping bag like a caterpillar, my nose freezing, I fell asleep around 8:30pm. I awoke less than an hour later to a loud crashing in the bushes, accompanied by vocal grunting. My senses came back to me one by one, and I soon realized I wasn't dreaming. There was something headed straight for me, and making a whole lot of noise in the process. ggrrrunstn snort snoorrrg huuurng!! Suddenly, I connected the dots and realized that I was probably camped on the creature's path, blocking it's way! Stupid girl. Frozen in place, ears perked up, I listening in horror as the moose (I don't know what else would make this much noise, so I deduced that it was indeed a moose) approached. And, it was rutting season. From what I gather, that means the bulls are roaming around looking for female to ride and other bulls to fight. So here I was alone in the woods with a moose.

I sleep with a cannister of bearspray. It's come to replace my stuffed bunny Snowball and my dog Rexy. But bearspray doesn't stop a mammal the size of an Volkswagen from stumbling into your tent at night Luckily, I didn't have to worry. The moose stopped short and detoured through the brook around me. I let out a sigh of relieve. Then I made a mistake: I responded to a text from my Mom, asking where I was camped for the night. I tried to think of how I could word my response so that she wouldn't worry, but couldn't come up with much that didn't involve a flat out lie. So I told here the truth, "Hi Mom! I'm camped by this nice little brook...except I think there's a moose out here with me...I hear him crashing around my tent and making a lot of noise. Love you, Meg". Then I went back to sleep.

I woke up intermittently to hear grunting and crashing. Needless to say, I didn't sleep as well as I usually do. But no moose antlers came crashing through my tent, so I counted myself lucky. Sometime in the early hours of the morning I woke up to the thwack thwack splash of beaver tails in the brook. I though this was pretty cool. I pulled out my cellphone to see what time it was, and saw a few missed called from my Mom, as well as a series of increasingly concerned text messages. Oh boy...

So I've retracted my wish to see a moose. I don't want to see one anymore. I have any desire to see one dead in a pickup truck or crashing around outside of my tent at night. I'm content to take photos of the moose statues which stand nobly in front of the visitor information centers on the side of the highway.