Mooses, Moosi or Meese?

The plural form’s just moose, by the way. Anyway. I saw my first one on Memorial Day. I’d wanted to blog about it, but in all my typing of my yesterday post, I forgot to. So you’re getting it today, instead.

Mainers have always warned me moose were dangerous. You don’t want to see them, because when you do, they usually cause trouble. Sort of like squirrels. Which is no doubt why Rocky teamed up with Bullwinkle. They became an unstoppable force To Be Reckoned With. In any case, I was driving home, minding my own business, following a Mack truck. And that’s when it hit me. No, not the moose. Mythbusters. I’d watched an episode where they found that tailgating a Mack truck could save you serious mpgs with the gas. But they also warned you like 1,000,000 times about how dangerous it was. I took a look at the truck in front of me and decided that–while I was probably saving some money right then in fuel costs–it would be wise if I backed off a ways. So I did.

Not ten seconds later, this horse comes galloping across the four lane road I’m on. A horse with antlers. A truck coming the opposite direction clipped the horse and sent it spinning into my lane. The Mack truck slams on the breaks, the lane next to me has a two car accident, and I have plenty of time to stop safely–because I’d given myself so much room behind the Mack. The moose (by this time I’d figured out what it was) must have gotten up and run off somewhere–I never did see it. I suppose there’s a chance the Mack truck’s still dragging it beneath it. Who knows?

I’ve learned several things from this.

• Moose really are dangerous
• Moose are very big
• I don’t want to ever hit a moose in my Honda Civic. The moose will win.
• Watching Mythbusters has now saved my life. If I’d been tailing that Mack as close as I had been, I don’t think I would have seen the moose come out into traffic. I was just listening to music and relaxing. The first I would have known about trouble was my head colliding with the bottom of the Mack’s trailer.
• I don’t know what prompted me to think about Mythbusters right then, but that prompting also saved my life. After all, it’s not like I think about Mythbusters non-stop every day. Especially when it’s in reruns right now. I’ve driven behind Mack trucks plenty since I saw that episode. This was the first time I really paid much attention to how close I was.
• Maybe God doesn’t want me dead yet. If that moose had waited two seconds more to cross the road, it would have spun right into my Honda Civic. (See point three above.)

In any case, it all ended up okay. No one was seriously injured (except perhaps for Bullwinkle), and I lived to blog another day.