Posted on 11/15/2013 9:05:50 AM PST by nickcarraway
In all the times Brett Ball has hiked and scrambled along the cliffs and trails at Four Dances Natural Area, he’s never seen anything as unusual as when he spotted a cow moose stranded on a ledge Thursday afternoon.
“I was shocked,” he said. “I saw something move, but it was down in the shade. I couldn’t believe it was a moose.”
Ball grew up in the 1970s along the nearby Yellowstone River and now lives in Lockwood, just east of the Bureau of Land Management’s Four Dances Natural Area. The area is 765 acres of rolling hills, huge boulders, caves, rimrocks, Yellowstone River bottom and narrow coulees like the one where the moose got trapped.
“I’m just surprised she’d come down this far,” Ball said. “I’ve seen bear and lion tracks, but never a moose.”
A nearby resident said he has seen all manner of wildlife, too, including coyotes, foxes and numerous whitetail and mule deer. But he has never seen a moose.
Moose do pass through Billings on occasion, though, following the creek and river drainages down from the Beartooth Mountains to the Yellowstone River, natural watery highways for the large mammals.
Moose are the largest members of the deer family, with bulls weighing up to 1,000 pounds and standing 7 feet tall at the shoulder. Their fur is a dark brown, often with light-colored legs. Other than their broad snout and slight shoulder hump, the other feature that distinguishes them is a wattle-like patch of skin hanging down from the lower jaw.
The reason moose are keen on waterways is that in the summer they dine on aquatic plants. At this time of the year, they switch to the leaves and twigs of trees like willow or shrubs like gooseberry and buffaloberry.
The young cow moose that stranded itself in the narrow coulee must have thought it was walking down to the river when it hopped down a 5-foot shelf and then found the next drop-off was about twice that distance. Unable to climb back the way it had come because of the slippery smooth sandstone that surrounded it on three sides, it paced back and forth on the small shelf before lying down to rest.
Ball phoned Fish, Wildlife and Parks. They hadn’t shown up by the time he hiked back to check on the cow.
“She looked like she wanted to find a way up out of there, but it looks like she fell a couple of times trying,” Ball said. “It’s definitely a natural trap.”
Agitated by the approach of people on the cliffs above her, the young cow paced nervously in a circle before she attempted to scale one of the sandstone sidewalls. Instead, the moose skidded backwards and crashed off the lower cliff through the brush and trees. Unhurt, it quickly made its way down the brushy coulee toward the river.
“I’m surprised she made that hop down there,” Ball said. “Fish and Wildlife is probably happy.”
A moose falling from a ledge once bit my sister.
See the loveli lakes.
Awwww. Poor thing. Glad she made it down. Hope she learned her lesson.
did she bite him back?
The best way to remove it is to make into moose steaks.
People think nature is perfect and nothing ever goes wrong. NONSENSE! I have customers who complain when their horses trip. They attribute every human characteristic to animals except the ability to err.
The La Brea tar pits are filled with mistakes animals have made.
I remember finding a racoon that had crawled up inside a hollow tree and tried to get out through a knot hole catching its hips. It died there.
I frequently see dear leap fences and land on them. A deer lept into the neighbor’s pool where it died. I have seen bucks with their antlers locked and dying. I saw a deer that tried to leap a tall wrought iron gate it impaled itself on. I have frequently seen a number of different animals trapped in deep creek beds or ravines unable to get out. I have seen animals attempt to swim rivers that were too swift.
One of my favorite Gary Larson toons is a beautiful picture of a buck running through the woods leaping over a log about to catch his rack on a low hanging branch. He captioned it, “Seldom seen Nature scenes.” From my experience these events are far from seldom, though I am sure they are rare in a cartoonists drawing room.
Gotta get glasses. Thought headline said Hitler instead of hiker. Now that would be something!!
It is too bad for the species that moose overslept the day that God handed out brains. They are definitely not the brightest crayon in the box.
We humans have police, fireman, etc. to rescue us when we do something stupid. Animals die from their mistakes.
“We humans have police, fireman, etc. to rescue us “
I’m not so sure:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3091223/posts
“Moo...
[BANG!]
“...Mooo.”
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