The Neighbors are a Bit on the Wild Side

 

Prior to moving to Wasilla, I'd never had too many dealings with moose. When I was living at the farm many years ago, we were all outside on the beach doing a "family" project. That was where most of the people came out to do something that would benefit the whole camp, in this case chopping firewood. Of course, there were always those who had some reason or another not to be doing the lowly manual labor that the rest of us were required to do, but it's a moot point. While were were all out there sawing the logs  and chopping the rounds, one of the fellows named Wayne Bender suddenly stopped what he was doing and pointed across the mud flats to the wooded area. "A moose! A moose! " he declared. Sure enough, there was a moose, hightailing it on the edge of the flats, headed to the point. Moose don't live on Chichagof Island as a rule. They periodically would swim across from the mainland. They are really good swimmers apparently, because its at least four miles across at the narrowest place. In any event, they were a bit of an anomaly there. 

That's not the case here. They seem to be on every street corner or every other yard right now, chowing down on the branches. I honestly don't see how they can possibly get enough nutrition from eating sticks, but somehow they do. It's one of life's mysteries.  There really isn't anything else for them to eat right now, so I guess it's good that they can survive on what's available. Back shortly after Christmas, my neighbor across the street called to let me know that I had several moose in my front yard, and one was wanting to come up on my porch. We had the front porch railing decorated with garland, and one of the moose tried nibbling on it. I'm glad that he found it unappealing, as there were Christmas lights wrapped with the garland, and they were turned on. It would have come as a bit of a shock if he had chomped down on those lights.

The upper picture shows a rather large moose behind my house helping itself to my neighbors willow or alder tree. They've pretty much eaten all the good stuff from my trees. I don't really mind, it's just that instead of chewing off the tips of the branches, they pull on them trying to get them loose, and in the process, they break the branch. It doesn't break all the way off, just enough to hang down and separate it mostly from the main trunk. This spring, if it ever comes, I'll have to go out and trim up a dozen or more branches. Somehow the trees always seem to survive, although I don't know how.

The little moose in the bottom two pictures had a snack on my trees, and then went and laid down at my neighbor's house underneath the exhaust vent for the furnace. I thought that was pretty smart, which is something moose are not known to be. Every year hundreds of them plow right out into traffic and get killed. When I went to Anchorage a few weeks ago, there was a sign saying that so far this year, 242 had been killed on the Mat Su Valley roads. They are trying to get the drivers to slow down and be alert. With that number of moose dying, it's obvious that moose aren't the only animal that isn't too smart.