Megafauna Glimpsed in Passing

I saw my very first moose this week: an event I've been waiting for all my life.  I've been in moose country often enough, and seen their tracks even down in the southern Berkshires where they are slowly but steadily expanding their range, but never before had my path crossed theirs.  On Monday, riding in the backseat through Crawford Notch in New Hampshire's White Mountains, my eyes registered a looming form by the roadside that wonderously materialized into a cow moose and two calves calmly browsing in the heat of the evening.

The first thing that registered was not its impressive size - six feet at the shoulder - but the the deep dark color of the animal.  Its coat was a rich mahogany brown and its face a lighter color, and I thought at first it might be a horse.  Our driver did not even pause - a colleague for whom moose had lost their allure- but the two of us in the back stared in dawning amazement at this extraordinary creature and its rust colored little ones nearby.  Twins are the norm for moose, born in May or June, and these two made me think more of bison calves because of their size and coloration than spindly-legged fawns.

There are at least 6,500 moose in New Hampshire.  In pre-European settlement times they were more common here than white-tailed deer.  They are heavy browsers and can consume course woody material in large quantities.  They may play an important role in keeping some early successional wetlands open and dominated by grasses and sedges instead of shrubs and saplings.  They find the sides of roads attractive for the road salts that accumulate there, and New Hampshire experiences as many as 200 moose vehicle collisions every year.

There were, I noticed, several cars parked opposite the moose as we drove passed, and someone with a camera was walking across the road to get a closer shot.  Given that a cow moose is fully capable of killing wolves and grizzly bears in defense of her young, this was not a good choice, but we did not linger to see the outcome.  I could have stayed and watched for hours but time and my colleague at the wheel waited for neither man nor moose, and they slipped by and vanished from view as we headed toward the crest of the notch.

While hiking down a logging road in British Columbia, I have seen grizzly bears swimming across an inlet of the sea.  I have surprised a sleeping elephant -far too close to each other for our respective comforts - and seen it rise to an impossible height faster than I could have thought possible and flee in one direction while I retreated in the other.  I have seen giraffes peering over the tops of Acacias as my old landrover rattled by.  But on Monday in the White Mountains I saw a moose and her babies, and those few moments were as awesome and memorable as any of the exquisite glimpses and fleeting encounters I have had with some of the world's great creatures.

Comments

[GreenmanTim]

Our friend Theo has many talents, surfing through adversity among them.

I'm at Windrock this week with the little people, giving their Mom a break and enjoying the sea breeze while the inland swelters. We are going whale watching off P-Town tomorrow. Glad you got down to the Jersey shore this week.

[Charlie Crystle]

For me it was the whale down at the shore, which hung out for 4 days about 200 yards out, feeding on baitfish. That and the shark I saw in the waves at Stinson Beach when theo and I were surfing. Probably 14 feet (I was on a 10-foot board), great white. I got out of the water, Theo ignored it and kept surfing. Successfully, as you might guess.

[Al Mollitor]

I haven't seen a moose in years. It must be time to get up north. Even though I see them just about every week, I still get a kick out of seeing deer. There's something thrilling about seeing such large animals running free. I wonder, though. As these ungulate populations grow near developed areas, I'm sure we won't allow natural predators to follow. Things like lyme disease, car/animal collisions and garden/landscape damage may become big issues.

[GreenmanTim]

How marvelous to see a living Opossum, given their nocturnal habits how frequently they are found dead on the roadside. Possums have more teeth than any other north American mammal - 50 - and live only a few years. Thanks for posting the comment, Genevieve!

[Genevieve]

I can imagine that it would be very exciting to see a moose, an elephant, or any large animal out in the wild.

Myself, I even get excited over possums and such. I was out in the yard after dark a few nights ago, talking on my cell phone in the only place I could get some service bars, when suddenly a little white possum ambled by less than 2 yards from me.

I made some exclamations of surprise which frightened the possum and he hid in a forsythia bush. I suppose he's accustomed to the sound of human voices around the house, and not being too bright, he thought I was just a tree trunk.