Moose on the Loose

As TA for the Forest Measurements lab, I teamed up with a lone student to conduct a timber cruise along a 3/4 mile transect of the Cadwell Forest in Pelham. About halfway through our cruise, as we were just about to measure a plot in the midst of a mountain laurel thicket, we were greeted by the distant crashing and thrashing of a large mammal. With all the talk of moose at Cadwell we hardly had to guess what animal we were about to meet, but we did have to guess why such a massive creature would be running in our direction at full steam through the impossible tangle of laurel. We had made an awful racket getting to our plot, and I half wondered if this bull mistook us as a competitor for his cows. That would not have been a good scenario, so I decided to quickly retreat from the fast-approaching bull that was now fewer than 50 feet from us, visible only as a tawny rack of antlers above the laurel and patchy dark shadow through the evergreen leaves. The moose apparently stopped just out of sight, so I hollered something into the trees, and then it was off again, now thrashing more wildly than ever, but heading east and away from us. Moments later a man on a bike came around the bend and told us of an enormous moose he scared off just up the road. So the bull was fleeing rather than charging, and we were content to carry on with our work. Just another day in the woods.