Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Running with the bull (moose)

I've compared traffic riding to running with the bulls and other metaphors involving large animals, but once in a while the metaphor comes to life.


This morning on Route 28 a bull moose sauntered out of the woods about a hundred yards ahead of me. He stopped in the lane as if trying to remember whether he'd turned off the gas stove before he left the house this morning. Then he spotted me. He took a step or two toward me, then started moving away, but still in the road.

A truck crested the rise. This turned the moose back toward me. Great! decades of successful commuting, and now I'm going to get stomped to death by a large, panicked herbivore.


I was next to a steep embankment I would have to scramble up in my cleats in a vain attempt to get out of the path of this beast. Fortunately he had only taken a few trotting strides before he saw a better route back into the forest.

As usual, the last motorists on the scene had no idea why other cars were all askew in the vicinity of a lone bicyclist. The moose had disappeared completely, the way they do.

4 comments:

limom said...

Man that's crazy!
You need some Bullwinkle repellant!
Or something.

Yokota Fritz said...

That's pretty awesome.

My only moose encounter has been high up in the Rocky Mountains at the headwaters of the Colorado River. It was just me and a flock (or tribe or gaggle or herd or whatever you call a collection of these critters) of Large Moose (Mooses? Meese?)

cafiend said...

I don't recall ever seeing more than three moose(s) in close proximity to each other. A whole bunch would be pretty intimidating. They seem goofy and harmless, but if they decide you're a threat they can do some kicking and stomping.

Anonymous said...

The plural of moose is " meesigh "