A Game of Cat and Moose

Alaska is famous for its wildlife. Most recognizably is probably the moose. The moose is somewhat of a symbol for Alaska and I grew to love the aura surrounding them. They are a majestic animal, growing up to fifteen hundred pounds and nearly seven feet tall at the shoulder. A bull moose can carry an antler set spanning over six and a half feet across. Coming across one in the wild is breathtaking. For me, in some cases, those incidents were down right terrifying.

I already mentioned the encounter with the two young bull moose that my dad and I had while fishing one afternoon. I had three other encounters that weren’t as pleasant of an experience.

The very first week that I moved there my dad and I went to an area of Homer where there was a new neighborhood of homes being built. At one of the homes we met a big man whose name was Buck DeGraffenried. He was obviously good friends with my dad. Buck was a builder and dad had done some finish carpentry for him. Apparently dad and Buck had made an arrangement to pick up a dog that Buck was needing to find a home for.

The dog was a beautiful chocolate lab named Pepper. She was a couple of years old and she was mild mannered and obedient. I was happy to know that we would be having a family pet. It would help me take my mind off of my little dog I’d left behind in Idaho.

Pepper was a lot of fun and my little brother and sisters just thought the world of her. She would let them ride on her back like a small horse. John and Heidi liked to use her for a pillow in the middle of our family room as they read their books. I don’t know if I’d ever seen such a good natured dog before.

Pepper liked to play outside most of the time and had free run of the forest around our home. We kept her food dish on the front porch so she could eat whenever she was hungry. Sometimes I would watch her through our only window as she would try to chase away the little “camp robber” gray jays that were giving us fits by plucking the clothespins off of the line and dropping all the clean laundry onto the ground. It was interesting how well Pepper knew how much we disliked those flying pests!

Birds were about the only things Pepper would chase off. Other animals like dogs, bears, porcupines, wolves, and moose could wander onto our property anytime they wished. One night, like clockwork, I awoke around 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning and needed to take a leak. My dad and I were lucky to be guys and we appreciated the fact that we didn’t have to walk all the way out to the outhouse unless our business required us to be in the sitting position. This was nice because, like this particular night, I really had to pee and don’t think I would have made it without our shortcut. We would walk right out onto the porch, turn to the side and let it fly.

That night I nearly cracked my head onto the roof trusses above where I slept. My bed was wedged where the roof came together with the upper floor of our little cabin. If I tried to sit up too quickly, let’s just say it would leave a pretty good mark on my forehead. I rolled out of my bed and crawled away far enough so that I could stand up without harming myself. I hurried down the steep staircase, which, to be honest, was more of a large ladder. At the bottom of the stairs I made a quick turn towards the door. I opened the door as quietly as I could while still maintaining my urgency. I was wearing a pair of shorts and socks and nothing else and the cool Alaskan summer night breeze was a little chilly on my bare skin.

I walked outside onto the porch and turned to my right so I could relieve myself onto the tundra below. About the time that I let out my typical sigh of relief I overheard a weird crunching sound just to my left. I turned to my left and through my groggy eyes, I slowly focused in on the origin of the sound.

Instantly I was wide awake and my heart rate tripled. My urination then ended prematurely. I stood there frozen in place holding my manhood in one hand as I stared eye to eye with a full sized bull moose. The noise I had heard turned out to be the moose chewing on a mouthful of Pepper’s dog food. The moose stared at me without a care in the world that I had just interrupted his dinner with a show not likely to win an Oscar. He just dropped his head and used his big lips and tongue to scoop out another mouthful of Alpo. He lifted his head again and began his chewing motion once more. He stared at me again and I slowly put myself back into my shorts and tentatively backed away toward the door, which was, thankfully, still ajar. I slipped in and closed the door.

I walked over to the window and gazed out upon the porch. The moose was finishing off the last of Pepper’s food and then with his nose, he pushed the dish off of the porch and onto the ground. He sniffed around the porch looking for some more food before turning around and slowly meandered away. I turned around and headed back up the stairs and to my bed. For some reason I didn’t feel the need to pee anymore.

A couple of months later we were heading back home from Homer after a church function. It was evening and dark as we drove up the Sterling Highway. We were in our little ’79 Subaru wagon and we were following our good friends Brian and Rhonda Owens. They were also driving a Subaru wagon that was a few years newer than ours. About half way home we saw the Owens’ brake lights come on and they were slowing down fast. Dad hit the brakes and as we were slowing down we saw a horrifying sight in the beam of our headlights. Over the top of the Owens’ Subaru came four legs and a very large animal. It came completely over their car and landed on its side just behind the car. Almost immediately we recognized it as a large female moose. The moose laid there for no more than a second or two and then jumped up and ran off the road and up the mountainside. We watched it run up the hill and then turned our heads towards our friends’ car.


The damage was devastating. The entire roof of the car was flattened down. The thought of what we’d find inside the car was sickening. They had broadsided that moose at close to 50 mph. The car was crushed.

Dad got out of the car and ran to the passenger side of the car. He place both his hands on the car and peered inside. His head dropped and the image of decapitated bodies flashed through my head. Then he looked up and turned his head back towards us. He held up his thumb to notify us that the Owens family were all ok. It was a miracle.

That was the incident that convinced me just how powerful a moose was. The car rammed into the side of that moose at a pretty decent speed and that moose got up and ran up the mountainside under its own power. I’m fairly certain that it suffered internal damages that more than likely caused it to die, but the sheer fact that it walked away at all is mind boggling.

The following spring, in 1986, my school bus dropped me off along North Fork Road at the corner of Lichen Street. I got off the school bus and began to walk alone down Lichen St as I did every other day. I only had about a two-thirds of a mile walk to get home. About a thousand feet or so from the house I looked over to my left and saw two cow moose lazily grazing on the branches of some Quaking Aspen trees about twenty-five yards away. I watched them, fascinated, as I strolled by carrying my books under one arm. They looked at me nonchalantly as they casually chomped away on the leaves.

It seemed that moose never had a care in the world. Nothing around them concerned them. They were often seen meandering around town like they owned the place. No matter how many people or cars, moose would just do their thing.

Moose at McDonalds in Homer, AK

These two moose didn’t appear any different. It was a beautiful day with the sun shining brightly in the wide open Alaskan sky. Patches of fireweed could be found spotted alongside Lichen Street, adding a beautiful contrast of pink and violet among the many shades of greens in the Alaska forest. It was a majestic view to behold and I soaked it in as I made my way.

Fireweed

While I was taken away in deep thought, I was startled back to reality by a sudden movement by one of the moose in my scene. I watched her ears lay back and her head lift up and then quickly back down in an aggressive manner. She was looking right at me. The fur on her shoulder hump stood up like I’d seen on the back of the neck of an angry cat. My heartbeat skipped and then began to pump a much faster rhythm. I stopped for a second with my eyes trained on the horse size animal. She just stood there with her eyes intently trained directly on me. Normally I would enjoy a competitive staring contest, but at this moment, I was more than happy to lose if it would get me out of that uncomfortable situation.

I took a step forward thinking I would just hurry and get myself home before something bad happened. That was the wrong thing to do. As soon as that first step hit the ground, the moose grunted and lunged forward. In a split second I was running for my life with the moose in hot pursuit.

I had always been pretty knowledgeable when it came to animals. I studied them often as a child. I don’t remember ever reading about how fast a moose can run. That giant beast gained on me as if I was running in mud. At this point, I have to express my deepest gratitude for the many trees that heavily populate the area. As I heard the stomping hooves get louder and louder, my instincts kicked in and I shot into the trees. At some point I had also began screaming at the top of my lungs for my dad. It was a normally quiet “neighborhood” and I was hopeful he would hear my desperate cries for help.

Once I was in the trees, I ran to the largest one I could find and grabbed it with my hand and swung myself around to position the tree between me and the charging moose. The moose was violently angry and tried over and over to get past the tree to me. I was quick on my feet and dodged effectively and then jumped behind a different tree. The moose followed my every move trying intently to harm me.

This went on for about an hour. Okay, maybe not an hour. It was more like 45 seconds. But that’s what happens to your judgment of time when a full grown angry moose is chasing you.

Thankfully my Dad was home and had heard my terrifying shrills. I saw him speeding up the road in our old Subaru. He drove as close as he could to where the moose had me pickled behind the tree. I jumped around another tree and as the moose lunged to follow me I sprinted to the car. I hurried around the car to the passenger door and jumped in just as the moose came around the same side. Dad was laying on the horn and trying to scare the moose away but the moose just lowered its head and used it to butt into the car.

Once I was inside Dad hit the gas and we sped away. The moose followed for a short distance and then stopped and watched us flee. We went a little further to a point where we could turn the car around and back towards home. We slowly began driving and as we approached the area of battle we saw the moose walk away from the road on the opposite side from where I had first spotted her and her friend.

We proceeded slowly keeping a close eye on the moose just in case she decided to make another run at us. As we passed by we noticed she stopped and bent down as though she was going to eat something off of the tundra floor. It was on the tundra there that I saw the small form of a moose calf laying down. It reached up and its mother licked its face in a most tender and loving way.

My realization of my mistake caused me to shake my head. I had unintentionally walked directly between the mother and her calf. It was that one step that had put me in a position that blocked her view of her baby and cause her to panic and act protectively. It was a known rule that I was made aware of when I had first arrived in Alaska. It was unavoidable in that situation and it provided evidence to me the magnitude of danger found in Alaska’s wild.