ungulates

at school we had a visitor. small for her size with great clouds of ether issuing from her nostrils and making all who saw her swoony and slow.

moose, despite their slowness and deliberate footing, often disrupt. partially because they are unpredictable- surprisingly agile, fierce, and fast; they will back slowly away when approached as often as charge.

as the earth moving machines and the newly relocated sift and rip at the moose's habitat, they are forced up, over and out of the small valleys and hills where they like it best. often when the weather begins to shift into cold and frost they will revisit old feeding grounds for food that has not yet frozen over. frequently they will shear and raze young cultivated shrubs and trees to sticks to the great dismay of their gardeners.

it is a hard balance we strike with them especially since moose, like most large and long living animals, are creatures of habit and will find a place they like and return again and again. when you see a moose in your yard,  see that wide fringed swoop of grass where he made his bed by the foxglove plant, under the window, you will see it again. and over again.

dogs do not disrupt them terribly. like monkshood and oleander, we have inadvertently (though only to a very small degree,) domesticated a living thing that poses danger to us. the moose become used to the small shouting animals that come out of buildings, to the strange, hard surfaces that loop the land, to the troublesome heaps of plastic and wood that are left out among the tender bushes to be knocked over while grazing, spilling cushions across the ground. and yet when people come out, waving arms and making all different kinds of noises, a moose, especially with a calf, will become rewired. now stiffening, now crackling and shivering, the side of fur and force will run at any living thing it assumes is a threat. they are diligent. they are fast. they are excellent swimmers.

and so from time to time there are stories about some poor soul, trampled and crushed beneath the dainty feet of a thundering ungulate, to their peril (but likely not because they were innocently strolling by.) this is unusual really. likely the consequence of someone getting too close, or not recognizing the change in the moose and running away pellmell when he should. (here is that gem of wisdom we are so often confused by in dealing with animals. from which do we flee and at which do we make lots of noise, wave our arms and stomp? as i am told by Someone Who Knows a Great Deal, a moose, being an omnivore without a predatory instinct, responds most positively in sticky situations to being left to her own devices. swiftly. yes, turn your back and run, for a moose has no "chase" circuitry; it does not seek a meal from you, but peace and quiet. (as, i am sure, we all do, most irritably, from time to time.)

and this is why, i think, that when a volunteer from school sought to rid of playground of our visitor by running out in her high heels and yelling, the moose was suddenly on her feet, head down aiming herself forward and charging. because no one really likes to be disrupted from a quiet morning with steam and light and bending grass and leaves falling slowly to the ground, by a yell and a stomp. moose or otherwise.