Run!

Lucy & I were charged by an angry moose today. We’d just come down the hill and over the bridge on the far side of the lake when I heard this distressed wheezing and grunting sound. I looked up the hill and among the birch trees saw a young moose coming fast in our direction. No big deal seeing a moose, we see them all the time in Kincaid Park, but this one appeared frightened like something was chasing it. Except I didn’t see anything behind it, and its hackles were up and its head lowered, a posture consistent with an angry moose. It was charging. Us! I thought Holy Crap, and started into a run down the trail along the lake. I shouted to Lucy to do the same. I slowed down just enough to turn and look, and sure enough the moose was still coming. We picked up the pace. I stopped again in another fifty feet or so and turned again. I didn’t see it moving but then I spotted it in the trees. When it saw me it started running in our direction again! We ran the rest of the way to the parking lot and stopped again, but this time no sign of the moose behind us.

I’d seen this sign a thousand times at the trail head but never paid it any attention:

BIGGER.

Years ago before Happy Wife and I were together, she was running on a popular Anchorage trail with her dog when a bull moose charged them. She ran for cover behind a tree and the moose pinned her down there. Every time she tried to escape the moose moved to stop her. Eventually, someone at a nearby house saw she was trapped and called the police. The police came and distracted the moose long enough for Happy Wife to escape, and then they shot and killed the moose. The story made the local newspaper and Happy Wife was pilloried in the comment section with claims she behaved irresponsibly around “our urban moose”, and now she has the blood of a dead moose on her hands. One outraged person even called her home phone to chew her out! Sheesh.