ESTESBOG

by Peter Walker

 

It all started in October, 1983. A young mother moose and her very large and rambunctious calf took up residence near a high-end subdivision in the town of Manchester, about 12 miles from Augusta, Maine. At first their presence was a novelty for the homeowners. But when the moose started eating ornamental shrubs their stock dropped considerably. When they joined a flock of trick-or-treaters on someone’s doorstep on Halloween, the residents had finally had enough.

            At the time I was the fish pathologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, working out of a small laboratory in the Belgrade Lakes Regional Headquarters near the State House in Augusta. Word came down from the head office across town that, when a call came from Manchester, we wardens, biologists, and technicians were to respond immediately to capture and remove the errant moose.

            The two moose, as if sensing the game had changed, became reclusive and unpredictable. We were called out 3 times in November only to be turned back because the miscreants had again disappeared.

Finally, the week before Christmas, the mother-daughter moose insurgents attempted another raid on the neighborhood and met with tragedy. They crossed the road in front of a speeding truck. The calf was struck and killed. The grief stricken young mother was standing nearby with her head held low.

The call to come get the remaining moose came in around 3 p.m. In that high latitude and on the far eastern edge of the Eastern Time Zone, there is very little daylight left at 3 p.m. on the shortest days of the year. We had to hurry. Two wildlife biologists, one technician, five game wardens, and a fish pathologist piled into three or four vehicles and struck off for Manchester.

The remaining moose was not hard to find. She stood outside the corner of a fence in a hay field about 150 yards off the road. With head held low and ears drooping, she certainly appeared to be in mourning.

Daylight was fast drawing to a close. Wildlife biologist Craig McLaughlin made a quick mental calculation. Figuring an average cow moose in that part of the world probably weigh at least 850 pounds, and knowing that there was only about half an hour of light to work in, Craig bumped the dosage of tranquilizer in the dart he loaded into his gun to speedily knock out the moose.

Next came the hard part: darting the moose. Ordinarily there would have been snow by now, but it had been a dry fall. Since there was no cover in the closely cropped hay field, McLaughlin, an experienced black bear researcher, simply walked up to the moose.

The horse-sized animal appeared not to notice the man’s presence until he was less than ten paces away.  Then suddenly its head came up, it erected its mane, laid its ears back and turned to face this pipsqueak who dared to approach. 

By comparison to the nearly black cow moose, Craig looked tiny and powerless. He nonetheless raised and cocked the modified shotgun and coolly stood his ground. A game warden standing beside me back on the road said with awe, “You’d never catch me doing that!”

For several long seconds there was a standoff. Craig needed a better target than the moose’s nose. The moose looked mean enough to squash him like a bug. Then an ear began to wiggle and switch positions. The moose was losing its nerve. Suddenly it whirled to run away and Craig fired the dart into its rump at nearly point blank range. The moose lumbered off toward the back of the field with the red and white dart sticking from its haunch.

It was obvious that the animal was going to make it to the woods beyond the field. If it made it back into the tangle, we might never get it back out. Instinctively I ran to head it off while Craig followed it from behind. The rest of my compatriots stayed put near the safety of their cars.

As I feared, before I could get close enough to be of assistance the moose disappeared into the dense trees with Craig McLaughlin not far behind it. Half a minute later I ran through the same opening on the woods’ edge to find that the ground suddenly dropped off about 30 feet into a brush-choked ravine. The moose stood at the bottom of the ravine. Craig had managed to outdistance it as the great animal began to feel the effect of the tranquilizer and now blocked it from progressing any further into the thicket.

By now the moose was no longer fiery-eyed and defiant.  The tranquilizer caused her to stagger with legs splayed and head sagging. With each breath she moaned a loud, pathetic, almost dog-like roar.

There was not time for discussion. We had to try to coax her back up the slope into the field or our mission would fail. Craig asked me, “Do you want the back or the front?”

“Lead the way. I’ve got the caboose!” I replied.

Craig grabbed one of the animal’s ears and began to lead it like a misbehaving child. The moose bellowed in protest but seemed powerless to resist. Meanwhile I first tried pulling on handfuls of coarse rump hair before finding I could do more good by simply whacking her on the butt and yelling, “Hee-yah, Moose!”

 At a trot the three of us noisily scaled the side of the ravine. As we reached the top the moose’s legs seemed to be turning to rubber and she staggered. “Don’t stop now!” Craig yelled.

The rest of our group was by now cautiously approaching the edge of the woods. It must have been quite a spectacle to see a moose with a human on both ends come bursting into the open in a screaming, bellowing tangle. Just as we re-entered the field the moose passed out and fell to the ground with a big plop. Craig and I stepped clear as the beast went down.

“If I hadn’t seen that with my own eyes, you could never convince me it happened,” said one of our incredulous onlookers.

It was nearly dark. Luckily our moose was very small as cow moose go. We later speculated that she had mated during her first fall. She probably weighed less than 500 pounds. It was a good thing as it turned out.

Had we been more prepared, we’d have brought a tractor with hydraulic bucket on a low bed trailer. Moose can be easily lifted onto the trailer by means of wide straps. But the only conveyance we possessed that evening was a yellow Chevy LUV compact pickup, the result of the sitting Director’s austerity campaign..

Gene Dumont, the other biologist in our midst, drove the little pickup across the frozen hay field and backed it up to the unconscious moose. The dinky trucks’ tailgate was lowered and eight men managed to slide the yearling cow moose on her knees up into the bed. Had it been a full-grown cow moose, her caboose would have protruded too far to secure it in the miniature truck bed. As it was, by lifting her great head up onto the cab, we were able to squeeze her forward enough to shut and chain the tailgate. A great bulge of moose rump hung over the top of the closed tailgate.

By now the moose was having trouble breathing because its relaxed tongue was in the way. Craig and Gene climbed into the truck bed and squeezed up behind the cab on either side. Standing, one held the moose’s head upright while the other held its enormous tongue out to one side to keep its airway clear.

Gene looked at me and said, “Get in and drive.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“I don’t care”, Gene replied, “As long as it is a long way from Manchester.”

As I eased the little truck across the frozen field I suddenly had an idea. The Chief Warden, John Marsh, had a back pasture in a very secluded area about 20 miles away. When we got to the road, I turned south.

So off we went through the countryside of central Maine on a crisp, clear December evening. I drove very slowly, mostly to spare my two companions from frostbite. As we passed through villages brightly lit with Christmas decorations, folks on the sidewalks would stop and stare slack-jawed as we passed.

It was a sight you just don’t see every day. The absurdly tiny, yellow pickup truck  was grossly overloaded with a kneeling moose whose head lay stretched out across the roof of the cab and its nose drooped down onto the center of the windshield. Two biologists lay stretched across the cab on either side attending to the moose. Meanwhile her more than ample moose rump with its stumpy tail bulged back over the top of the tailgate.

Half an hour later I turned into the driveway of Marsh’s Bog Hill Farm. As I drove past the house, I waved to John’s long suffering wife Judy as she stood in the doorway just shaking her head from side to side. She’d seen crazier things than that.

I proceeded right on through the open pasture gate and drove to the high side of the sloping pasture. It turned out that all we had to do to unload our “package” was to lower the tailgate and, with Craig and Gene holding on to her south end, drive slowly northward sliding her out onto the ground.

Craig by now realized that he had greatly overestimated the size of the moose and therefore had given it a very large overdose of the immobilizing drug. It was going to be hours before the moose would regain its mobility. Meanwhile he volunteered to sit with her lest she choke.

Gene decided to drive me back to Augusta before returning to assist Craig. As I closed the tailgate I spotted an aerosol can along the edge of the truck bed. It was a can of fluorescent red tree marking paint. In an instant I had a great idea! We could paint Merry Christmas on each side of the moose before it came to!

My two partners, both of whom had to deal with grumpy administrators and a discontented public on a daily basis, vetoed my idea. Thus one of the great artistic opportunities of a lifetime was lost. They wouldn’t even allow me to spray a tiny red spot on her nose.

Our moose did not regain full function until almost midnight. Somewhere in the Maine countryside that Christmas wandered what might have become a real live Rudolph….sort of.