𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐑𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟎: 𝐉𝐮𝐝𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐎𝐰𝐥

 Memories of a Rural Paper Carrier Chapter 10: Judgements from Moose and Owl

I've been wanting to mention some of the late night/early morning animal encounters I had on the route. There were so, so many. Some animals are nocturnal in nature, so that's when you're most apt to see them.

After watching a Youtube video of an abysmally stupid woman trying to approach and pet a wild, full grown female bison with a calf, and getting tossed around like a cotton ball and having her pants ripped off like toilet tissue, it reminded me of a simple paper route encounter with a moose. 

We were doing the Olmstead/Jeffery Lake Road, Acres Road, Fourth Line loop in the Cavalier hatchback. As we were coming up the hill on Acres Road to turn down the Fourth Line, a lone moose was standing there on the roadway, right across it, facing South. I stopped about 30 feet short of it, and it just turned its long, rangy head towards us, and seemingly idly stared at us. It never flinched. Not even an ear moved. It just stood there, tall, lanky, and immovable, regarding us. It was the closest up I'd ever seen a moose. 

After sitting there for a minute or two, it still hadn't moved. I thought about tooting the horn, then reconsidered. Something didn't seem right. Like that would be a very bad idea. Instead, I put the car in reverse and slowly backed away down the hill away from it and stopped a few hundred feet back. The moose never moved as I did that. It just stood there stock still. After us sitting back there, the moose's head slowly turned towards the direction its body was pointing, and it ambled off the road into the ditch and up the hill out of it. I put the car in gear and quickly drove past where it was now standing superior to us and didn't waste any time at the stop sign. 

What made me pause was the uncanny feeling I got that if I blew the horn that moose was going to jump on the hood of the car and stomp it to bits. 

Years later, my friend Ben was telling me a story about his Dad and Mom. They had gone to SouthWestern Ontario to buy a new car. In the Cambridge area, I think. They got a lot better deal on a new car there and their trade in than here so it was worth the trip to them.

On their way back home, they came through Algonquin Park. As they neared the East Gate of the Park on Highway 60, they came across a moose standing on the roadway. Just like ours, it was standing across the road. Traffic had stopped in the other direction, waiting. Other traffic had pulled up behind Ben's parent's car as well. Ben's Dad, an impatient, impulsive man, sat there fuming about not being able to proceed. They were retired, so there wasn't anything pressing them but his impatience. He told his wife he was getting sick of waiting and he was going to blow the horn at "that stupid ******* moose". His wife told him not to and to just wait for the moose to walk away. No, he was too impatient and no stupid moose was going to impede his progress so he leaned on the horn.

If he wanted that moose to move he got his wish. From standing dead still and idle it sprang into motion. Straight at them. The moose charged at their car, jumped right up on the hood, and started stomping it with his huge hooves. In seconds it remodeled that hood into the shape of the engine underneath it, then jumped back off and ambled away into the wide ditch, King of the Park.

Ben's Mom exploded at his Dad. She was just livid. "I told you! I told you! Are you happy now?! Are you?! Our brand new car!!! I told you not to blow the horn at him! You stupid sunuva***** ... "

It was bad enough the car had gotten wrecked, but now his ears and pride were getting wrecked as well. Not that he didn't deserve it.

That story sure made me glad I didn't blow the horn at our moose because what happened to them is exactly the impression I got when we encountered ours. Moral of the Story: Give the right of way to the moose. They aren't as docile as they can appear, and, masters of all terrain, they can moove in all directions, quickly. Your car or truck is nothing to them. You best wait. 

One fall morning, as I was heading towards Highway 17 on Kohlsmith Road at about a quarter to 4, I thought I saw something in the distance on the road. It was just a vague impression of a shape, because it was the same shade of grey as the road. I squinted over the steering wheel and hit the brakes. There was something there and the headlights picked it out. A tree stump the same colour as the road. Not being able to stop in time I hit it with a surprisingly light 'whummph' and it tumbled down the road in a puff of feathers. An owl. A huge great horned owl. 

Yanking the parking brake on, I jumped out of the car and ran up to it and looked at it laying there on its side with its back to me, dead. Darn... However, as I was standing over it, it just stood up. Stood up as in it just came up sideways to a perpendicular position, with no apparent means of doing so. Think of a table lamp or a baseball bat just suddenly standing up. No arms, no bending, no kneeling... just... standing up. Rolling up from a horizontal to a vertical position by itself. That's what he did. I was astonished to realize he stood almost the height of my waist! Just heooge. He was much larger than the typology in Wikipedia. In his stereotypical owl-like manner, still with his back towards me, his head just swiveled around like it was on a turntable, and now his face was looking right at me. The effect was downright bizarre and just a little unsettling. In broad daylight it would be weird. In the black dark night in the headlights of my car it was like something out of a slasher/screamer movie. Like Chucky in plumage. 

His face. That face. No judge in no courtroom could ever look at you with such stern, imperial rebuke as this Regent of the Wild. I just stammered, "I'm sorry, I didn't see you there..." Not impressed by my plea of innocence, he then silently turned his whole body on the same turntable under his thoroughly reproaching head to face me. 

He was huge. Far larger than I ever imagined possible. This was a tall tree stump with feathers. A lot of feathers.

Unblinkingly looking up at me in the most accusing fashion I have ever witnessed, I noticed little trickles of blood coming out of his nostrils. I had really rang his bell, and he was not amused by it in the slightest and he was good and well silently telling me so in a manner of "How dare you, Sir, do such a thing as that to me?!" 

And he was right. "What an outrage!" I almost shrunk in his silent, withering look. I was On Trial, and I was guilty. "Guilty indeed, Sir." The Magistrate was pondering my punishment.

He soundlessly shook his ruffled feathers down into an impeccable appearance, akin to an 1890's English gentleman, replete in his smoking jacket, cigar, and pocket watch and chain, having his nightcap by the fire in the study before turning in for the evening. Deeply offended by my completely brusque and unnecessarily explosive intrusion into his quiet contemplation of whatever it was he had been engrossing himself in there in the peace and solitude of the cool night, he stood there unflinchingly, regarding me with sovereign and magisterial distain. How something could be physically looking up at me and yet making me feel like he was looking down on me at the same time was beyond my grasp, but believe you me when I tell you he most certainly was. 

His poise and dignity fully reestablished, he just stood there immobile, glaring up at me without a blink. I was without a doubt the criminal in all of this and he was letting me know it. Maybe I was supposed to walk out in front of a passing truck or suffer spontaneous human combustion or just flat out drop dead as penance for my transgression. Maybe my comprehension of suitable punishment was exaggerated and I was supposed to offer up a fat mouse? I don't know, but he appeared to be passing judgement on me and wasn't backing down. He certainly wasn't offering me a cigar and a chair. I may not speak owl or understand their expressions, but I know that wasn't it. 

It was kind of hard to know what to do. Without question he was already very deeply offended by my invasion of his privacy and transgression of his bodily autonomy, so picking him up simply wasn't an option or even a possibility. There was one powerful looking beak and some deadly looking talons where there weren't feathers or eyes. He was decidedly a refined Gentleman of distinction, but he didn't strike me as being beyond defending his personal safety and dignity if the situation demanded it either. When I put my hands out to move him, somehow his expression or at least demeanour changed to one of "I think not!" 

Not wanting him on the road, but having no idea what to do with him, I just edged closer to him. He responded with an equal, irritated move away from me. No fear - none, in those, big, bright, yellow, unblinking eyes, but he wasn't letting me touch him either. I managed to awkwardly get him to move to the shoulder of the road, where he still stood there still regarding me in utter distain and disgust. And discord and dissention.

Suddenly, and I mean instantaneously, he sprung up in a 180 degree turn to my head height, and an absolutely enormous wingspread of soft, downy, white-tipped and undersided feathers just noiselessly exploded out of nowhere into being, and, with a final look over his back that I couldn't discern was forgiveness or condemnation, he effortlessly arched away into the black, cool night air over the bush like a wraith. Not one sound. Not then. Not before. His deadliest move would make a pin dropping sound like a bowling alley at 7PM. I can solemnly attest from that very up close and personal experience, nothing would ever hear that death stalker of the air coming. If I couldn't hear him take off right in front of me within arms reach at head height, nothing would ever hear him gliding in from the air. An absolutely silent Master of the Night Sky. 

I just stood there in the headlights on that lonely road, just completely stunned by the whole encounter. I never saw such utter dominion of one's environment as that. After getting in the car and driving away, I somehow found myself no longer in such a hurry. And I didn't want the noise of the radio so I turned it off. I often listened to European news on the first part of the route. I think it was called Radio Free Europe. It rotated from Poland to Czechoslovakia to Germany and so forth with the biggest headline stories from each country and I found it seriously interesting what was happening so far away that affected them and might ultimately affect us all. I think the chime in from Warsaw Poland was called Radio Free Polonia, and I absolutely loved the young lady newscaster's sweet smooth voice and lush accent. However, that night I found plain and simple silence a better companion for the rest of those darkened hours than I did human voice.

When I read while writing this that a Great Horned Owl reaches a maximum of 5½ pounds, I was amazed, because I thought that fellow standing before me that night would have been 30 pounds or more, due to his height and girth. But, of course, they are mostly comprised of feathers, and their way of storing their wings makes them appear much bulkier than they actually are. The maximum height is stated as 25 inches. That I hold in dispute. This fellow was close to 30. I have a 30 inch inseam, and there was still my shoes below that, and he was still standing almost to my waistband. Females actually are slightly larger than males, so it could very well have been a female that judged me so silently and scathingly that night.

From the nature of my work, there were many, many encounters with animals on the route. They didn't start with the Silver Bullet and they sure didn't end with him either. Nothing seems to bring them to memory like writing about other ones, so I will also put them to paper as they come to me.