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Now I know two things about myself... I was born to be a matador, and my eventual cause of death will be trampling. I've been working in the yard, but had a moose incident of some proportion, so I decided to come in and let the adrenalin settle... so here I am at the keys telling my tale of a foolish old fat woman that protects her garden like the Alamo.
While transplanting some yellow perennial foxglove, I heard the dogs barking excitedly and spotted a moose entering the yard. Now, if you've never been very close to a moose, they are quite huge... the size of a horse, only taller, and easily excitable... at least this one was.
In another thread, I think I mentioned having tried spraying one with a hose, and it charged me. You can always tell when they are ready to charge, because the hackles go up on their back like a dog. Of course, I can't outrun a moose, so I dropped the hose and darted behind a tree. The moose ran past me and off to the woods. In a couple other incidents, I managed to encourage them out of my yard with some rather loud renditions of the theme from Mr. Ed. My experiences have usually been with cow moose and calf.
Today was a whole new experience in moosery. The visitor was a young bull. He wasn't concerned about my presence, and he wasn't phased by the dogs barking. It is often best to quiet the dogs, since moose tend to challenge dogs and go out of their way to do so. Corndog obeyed my command to "stay" and "be quiet". I really don't think she wanted to challenge him either.
As he walked the yard looking for morsels.. and they were in abundance, I began singing the Mr. Ed theme song. It wasn't having the desired effect, so I got a bit louder and added lots of vibratto. I even changed key to make it more offensive. Finally, he walked across the road into a wooded area, and I felt good about once again singing away a moose.
However, about 10 minutes later, he was back in the yard. I started to sing again, and he wasn't impressed. I silenced the dog and tried to maintain a noisy presence so that he would decide it wasn't a good place to be. After singing in a key that was high enough to make my throat ache, his hackles went up and he charged me.
I ducked behind the same tree I had ducked behind the year before and he ran by, but instead of continuing out of the yard, he turned and ran at me again. I moved to the other side of the tree, and we played tag for what seemed like about three hours, but was in all likelihood about three seconds. Finally, he just trotted off into another area of the yard, & I followed him at a distance, wondering what to do next.
I have heard that a moose will yield to anything with a bigger rack than he has, so I stuck my arms out, bent upward at the elbow, to impersonate a big bull moose. Well, let me tell you, that is a real fable. This young bull must have thought I wanted to do battle, and he was up for a tussle. He came charging through the brush at me, and I stepped behind a little alder with three trunks no bigger than 3" in diameter. When he came past me, I could have reached out and touched him... not that I was inclined to do so. ("Tap, tap, tap. Hey, buddy, you missed me!" ...not likely!)
By this time we'd both become quite upset, and neither of us was really backing down... although I was sure moving out of the way in a much speedier way than I ever thought I was capable of. I decided to plead with him to leave. Maybe it was something in my tone, maybe it was the fact that I was just more trouble than he wanted to deal with.. whatever.. he trotted off across an area that has several pallets of perennial plants, without so much as tipping one over.
He began nibbling salmonberry bushes in our woods, and I stood back to let him know I was still around, but willing to allow him to eat in peace. When I finally felt he had vacated my yard for awhile, I came in to check on the dogs. The oldest one is about 12, and she never even made the trip out to where I was dueling with the moose. Her daughter, the younger one is about 6 years old, and she had stayed outdoors as I swung behind trees and the moose crashed through the brush. It took me several minutes to convince her everything was OK. Now, if I can just convince myself!
As I sit here writing now, I wonder what in the world possessed me to challenge a young bull moose! He is one of the few things I don't outweigh, he is younger and faster, and he has hooves. Moose have been known to trample people to death, so it is no small thing to square off with one. I accept the fact that I am stupid, I accept the fact that he is a wild thing, doing his wild thingery, but I've worked so hard on this yard, I've spent so many hours planting, transplanting... I just have too much invested to allow him to nibble the tops out of everything because it happens to strike his fancy. I think I am destined to die in my yard, trampled by a moose. Someday, Dennis will come home and find a big flat grease spot in the yard wearing a pair of garden gloves. Oh, well, I guess it beats a wheelchair in a rest home. Anybody have any foolproof moose deterents that aren't fatal to either me or the moose?
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