Moose in the Pit

When the wild things get restless

My wintertime workday on a ski mountain generally starts in that shadowy time between night and day. Shapes and movement are discernible but hardly definite. So, when I skied up to the lift terminal one day this winter the moose wandering around in the pit—the area of a ski lift a few yards past where people load—didn’t really register as something that would be part of my day, or even a threat. It was more of a dreamy vestige of the equally shadowy time between sleep and wakefulness—Oh, there’s a moose, I thought, that’s weird.

I suppose a more appropriate thought would have been: Oh, shit, there’s a moose. Time to flee. It didn’t occur to me at the time that being strapped to a pair of skis on flat ground was probably the worst possible place to be with a moose that was within spitting distance.

But the moose seemed perfectly at ease, nibbling on bushes, so, I guess I did, too. But it was a dubious sense of ease because, in reality, moose are shockingly big—upwards of a 1,000 pounds and 7 to 8 feet tall at the shoulders—and sometimes cranky and always fast. By fast, I mean running up to 35 m.p.h. Usain Bolt runs a 9.58 second 100-meter dash, which equates to about 23 m.p.h. Even Usain would lose to the moose, with or without skis.

A few days earlier, just a mile or so from the pit, a local woman pulled into her driveway and let her two dogs out. When she followed her barking dogs around to the side of the car, she was confronted with a cow moose—possibly the same one but no one is sure. The moose charged, head-butted her, then kicked her. She lost consciousness, suffered a broken nose and bruised thigh but otherwise survived.

A few days earlier still than the head-butting incident, a mountain lion was—and probably still is—doing some hunting on a couple of our ski runs. We know this because early morning hikers spotted its eerie eyes and heard it growl.  And then the cat drivers (no pun intended) who work at night came across the carcasses of a couple deer and a fox. We, the ski patrol, got a call that said in so many words, “Deal with it.” So, we skied the carcasses into the woods and shoveled up the bloody snow. Bloody snow is never good for business.

And then there were the noises in the night. For a couple nights in a row—more precisely at 3:30 a.m. or so, I kept hearing a strange rustling noise. The first night I just assumed it was one of my adult kids home for the holidays rooting around for a snack upstairs. I was a little annoyed in my half sleep but let it go. The noise came back the next night at about the same time. Again, I was too lazy to get up and investigate. The third night, though, I did get up and looked out the sliding glass door of the bedroom to the deck. There on the other side of the glass—not more than 12 inches away—was a cow elk, her dull, marble-like eyes fixed on me. I suspect it’s about as close as I’ve ever come to having a heart attack. The elk, nonplussed, turned and took a bite out of a bush nearby.

Then there is the case of a friend who, out in her neighborhood one morning, came across a bear roaming about. My friend startled, then ran—never a good idea. The bear ran after her. Remarkably, she made it to the other side of a door before the bear did.

The stories could go on.

What in the world is going on here? Why all the restlessness? Are the animals coming for us?

Of course, there could be very sensible ecological explanations for all this wildlife-human communing.

For one, habitats are changing. Warmer temperatures on average are driving many North American species further north and to higher elevations. Boreal forests are invading tundra areas, the boundaries of conifer forests are shifting, river and lake waters are warming, deserts are getting bigger. Animals notice this stuff, even if we don’t. And despite the fact that we go to great lengths to distinguish ourselves from the animal kingdom, the fact is animals aren’t stupid. Their wits are well informed by their instinct for survival. They adapt to most of the curve balls we throw them.

Another logical explanation has to do with habitats changing in a different way, that is, by fragmenting. Blame it on COVID, or just the trendy migration from the hip economic centers to the hip mountain towns, but subdivisions are popping up all over the rural West. And rarely do developers take into account migration patterns or the habitats of the traditional inhabitants.

We tend to say the animals are moving into our terrain, which has it backwards, of course. Regardless, venturing into the semi-rural interface is on average probably a safe bet for most animals; there’s often food, plowed driveways and roads to travel on, even adulation from two-legged types looking for cool photos for their Instagram accounts. What’s more, a cow elk undoubtedly knows that she’s not likely to be pulled down by a pack of wolves while nibbling bushes on my deck.

I’m a firm believer in science and logic, but there is also a screwy, mystical part of me that interprets these events as signs, visitations from the natural world, if you will. Maybe these animals are trying to tell us something, or remind us of something we already know.

What would that be? Perhaps it is to live more like they do: with a little more simplicity as a guiding force, to more often rely on instinct rather than guile, to approach the world with more humility than arrogance.

The other day, my youngest daughter, who is 4, was making Valentines for her pre-school classmates. There were 24 valentines to make; it was no small undertaking. Somewhere along the way I heard her say from across the room, “I want to make this one blue for Lucas. Lucas likes blue; it’s his favorite color.” I thought, how in the world does she know that about Lucas? I work with 24 or so people every day; could I pick out one of them and know his or her favorite color? Not in a hundred years. But maybe I should be able to.

It was another lesson in humility, a reminder that from time to time we need to get outside ourselves. Look around. Look at each other. Look at our habitat. Look at the animals. What are they all telling us?

Back to the moose in the pit. The ski patrol was once again called to the scene despite the fact that we as a group know virtually nothing about big wild animals. That notwithstanding, we stood guard for a while. Eventually, Fish and Game showed up: six or seven officers with weapons, badges and serious demeanors. They watched the moose, then walked to different vantage points and watched some more. This went on for hours. Meanwhile, skiers blissfully skied by. Some stopped to collect photo fodder for their social media personas.

I didn’t see it happen, but I was told that after the mountain closed, one of the Fish and Game officers shot the moose with some sort of dart. The lot of them dragged her away to a horse trailer then drove off. Where the officers drove her no one knows, but I imagine it was a place far from here. I hope it’s nice. No doubt she woke up thinking, “Well, that was weird. Where the hell am I now?”

That’s how NIMBYism works in the West.