Instant Fall

“Just wanted to comment that it looks like there will not be a great deal of color this year for the Fall foliage. There has been such a lack of rain in the Northeast that the leaves are dying already!”

“I wouldn't doubt it about the colors.. this dry, hot and humid weather sucks.”

“The allergy situation is the worst I've ever experienced, exacerbated no doubt by high ozone counts.

My tomato plants are browning out and I water them every day.”

“What, not the squirrel's fault?”

“No, he just rips off (literally) the tomatoes as they ripen.”

“I have a bazillion squirrels and they don't bother my plants at all. What makes yours so special?”

“because Mr. PS has a crush on Geobeet


(kiss~kiss)”

“treebait,
i can handle not having the best colors for the Maine trip but atleast let there be moose!!!”

“Frankly I never even knew squirrels ate tomatoes until this spring. Psycho has been digging up planters, including my carniverous plant bog terrarium, and eating tomatoes. He lugs even big ones (for a squirrel) around to the picnic table and finishes them off there. My downstairs neighbors said they pulled in one night and there were three squirrels eating tomatoes.

They are sweet tomatoes. I haven't got a clue why.”

“Maple is lying all snug in her bag when she hears BIG feet coming toward her tent, and just then it sounds like she pitched the tent under a waterfall as the bull moose marks her new tent.

Don't laugh. Happened to a guy I knew.”

“I don't want to mess with a moose. Very myopic and very territorial.

I only have problems with racoons and turtles with my tomatoes. The squirrels do however dig up my lettuce box. Something in there must smell really good.”

“While coming home from the bank, I saw a woman in agony on the ground with another woman holding a hankerchief to her head like the lady tripped and hit her head on the ground. I guess that too is kind of like "an instant fall".”

“corp. nasty did it...



lol”

“New Canada – Ah, fall in northern Maine, when a young moose’s fancy turns to romance and woe to anyone or anything that gets in its way.

This is a case, local warden’s are saying, which is unlike any other they have run across, and one that has left two area families with thousands of dollars in property damage.

“When a bull moose is chasing a cow in heat, it doesn’t matter what’s in the way,” Maine Warder Ed Christie said Wednesday. “It will just mow it down.”

Like most tales of hormonally influenced romance gone awry, the story begins on a Saturday night.

Last Saturday night, Kim and Steven Raymond were awoken by loud noises around 11pm outside their New Canada Road home. The town of New Canada, population 275, is located next to Fort Kent in the most northern reaches of Maine, almost on the Canadian border.

“We heard quite a commotion and came downstairs to check it out, “ Kim Raymond said Wednesday afternoon. “We opened the door and looked outside and could hear heavy breathing.”

At first, the Raymonds thought on of their five horses had escaped.

“Then we saw its silhouette and realized this was no horse, it was a cow moose,” Kim Raymond said.

As her husband went outside – rifle in hand – in an attempt to drive the moose away, around the corner of the house came the amorous and determined bull moose, with one thing clearly on its mind.

While Kim Raymond watched from a second story window, Steve Raymond suddenly found himself between the muscular bull, which weighed about 800 o 900 pounds, and the object of its desires, a sleek young thing of female persuasion, weighing about 450 to 500 pounds.

“At one point, the cow laid her ears back and came at Steve,” Kim Raymond said. “Then the bull lowered his head and antlers at Steve and started among at him pretty quick.”

Beating a hasty retreat to his garage, just seconds ahead of the cow moose behind him, Steve Raymond was forced to hold shut the garage door against the cow as she tried to follow him inside. The female, desperately trying to avoid the avid suitor, pushed against the garage door repeatedly.

It was at this point the family decided to call for backup.

Christie said he received a call from the Maine State Police dispatcher at 11:06pm Saturday, who woke him form a sound sleep to tell him a moose was trying to break into a New Canada home. The warden had a hard time believing wheat he was told, until a conference call was set up among the dispatcher, the warden and a panicky Raymond.

“At first, I was not sure he knew what he was talking about, “ Christie said.

Raymond was able to convince the warden he had a serious moose Lothario on his hands.

While the family awaited the wardens’ arrival, they watched as the bull moose, not to be thwarted, turned his amorous attentions to the Raymond’s five Appaloosa horses out in the nearby pasture. The bull broke through a fence and chased the horses, both male and female, who were no more interested in his clumsy affections that the cow moose had been.

Twenty minutes later when Christie arrived at the Raymond home, he found Steve Raymond patrolling outside, the cow moose, which had been chased to exhaustion, passed out in front of the family’s barn and the bull moose nowhere in sight.

On the south side of the house, Christie found a hoof mark 9 feet off the ground, blood and moose hair.

A 2 foot by 6 foot section of vinyl siding had been ripped from the west side of the house and pieces of aluminum and trim had been ripped from the garage door. Bushes around the house had been mauled, the warden said.

The worn out cow moose had a bloody nose, a cut under one eye, a wound to her shoulder “and was panting like a dog who had run for hours on end,” described the warden.

Christie speculated the female was attempting to flee from the bull when she crashed through a small stand of trees and found the Raymond home directly in her path.

Poking, shoving and making noises, the two men eventually were able to get the female moose back on her feet, and, after a drink from a nearby puddle, she wandered off into the woods.

The male did not end his evening as quietly.

After failing to win his intended’s heart, the bull next paid a nocturnal visit to the Raymond’s neighbors, Bob and Pam Lozier, finding a new object of affection.

The Lozier farm is located across the road and “shouting distance” from the Raymond home, according to Pam Lozier. When the Lozier family woke early Sunday morning to begin the day’s harvest on the farm, their 20 year old son Jon noticed blood on his pickup.
“Then he turned around and saw my car,” Pam Lozier said Wednesday. “It had been demolished.”

In an apparent fit of ungulate pique, the same bull moose had smashed the windshield, destroyed the driver’s side window, disabled the driver’s side door and dented much of the remainder of the 1998 Oldsmobile Aurora.

“We found parts of the mirror 6 feet away on my porch,” Lozier said. “I guess he liked the looks of my car. We found blood an moose hair all over the front seat.”

Moose fluids about which she did not want to even speculate were also found on the car.

“It smelled awful,” Lozier said.

The moose also damaged decorative pillars on the front of the Lozier home. Lozier estimated the damages to her car will run close to $7,000.

Unlike her neighbors, Lozier said her family did not hear a sound that night. All had just returned from a 380 mile round trip to watch their daughter play in a soccer game.

“We must have been really tired,” she said.

Moose, Christie said, can be unpredictable and dangerous at any time, but are even more so during the week and a half rutting season that starts with the advent of the cooler fall temperatures.

“I’ve seen a moose chase cows and knock them over,” Christie said. “But I’ve never seen one do this kind of damage to a house.”

The warder cautioned anyone against approaching a moose, especially at this time of year. Should the lovelorn critter return and continue to harass the Raymond’s horses, the family has been told they can shoot the animal.

Neither family wishes the animals any ill will, but are hoping the pair hold their lover’s quarrels elsewhere, although the bull was spotted early Wednesday near the Raymond’s home.

“I don’t want another visit,” Pam Lozier said. “Well, they can come back, as long as they don’t damage anything.”

Julia Bayly, Bangor Daily News, October 5, 2000”

“You know what you add to instant fall don't you? Water.....aka, rain. The fall will probably be wet and muddy this year making for crappy backpacking.”

“Anyone suggest some good non-AT New England hiking for next year when the colors may be better? I'd love to do a fall hiking trip in N.E. but not on the AT superhighway.”

“What we need right now would be instant fall. Weather I mean. It's 90 degrees and humid at 8:30 P.M. with no relief for days. It's the worst summer I can remember. I've about had it with this summer weather and the fall can't come soon enough for me.”

“You said it, richb.”

“an apparent fit of ungulate pique?”