I love winter, what's not to love...

More Than One Way to Die, part IV Orphan Moose

I realize this is not a very glamorous subject to write or read about but animals rescued from the wild are not all fairy-tale features. Those individuals having the revered interest and opportunity to take part in saving lives deserve to be told the whole story. And sadly, this is one of those chapters.

.....Baby had been grooming herself excessively. I never knew moose were such clean creatures. She is a veritable yoga guru elongating her neck to stroke bony shoulders with a thick muscled tongue that darts in and out with snake-like precision. Hind legs extend forward with flexibility of a gymnast to appease her forehead. I watched and wondered at this sprucing up ritual. Once I observed her curl velvety lips back to open passage for teeth and savagely rip out a tuft of brittle hair from her whithers. I thought this odd and jotted a note in my journal as a sign of orphan oddities. Curiosity compelled me to research this obsessive behavior. Inscesent grooming could be a comfort practice I imagined. She was without the reassurance of an adult and needed consolation
......How wrong surface impressions can be. Another barbaric act of nature had reared its hideous head. Baby was covered with reddish-gray blobs of blood-sucking ticks over one-fourth of her tiny body. We had no way of telling how many lay burrowed beneath the hide but there were an observable 30-50 exposed on patches of bare skin. Baby's concentrated grooming tactics were on-going labors to purge these blood-sucking demons from her flesh. A species called Dermacentor Albipictus or winter Ticks. *

.....Winter ticks kill. They cause blood loss, itching, inflammation and skin ulcerations. Ticks winter over in moose as well as deer and elk. Animals become infested in late summer to early autumn when they contact lumps of tick larvae on tips of vegetation.* By November ticks molt to nymphs and in January begin feeding. They peak in mid-February and molt into adults.* (Mid-February was when we first noticed the largest ones on her rump.) Numbers peak in late March through April and all drop off by mid-May.* The moose can live tick free until late summer when the cycle starts over again.* Winter ticks however are most prevalent south of 60 degrees latitude.* When winters are as horrid as the ones we have been battling, food is meager and vital protective fur drops off due to tick infestation. Malnutrition and exposure are the bold indisputable signatures found on their death certificates.

...What would be our course of action given this new information? Only what is within our power; extra food, more attention and greater love. We boosted Baby's intake of deer feed adding cracked corn. Coincidence or cure we aren't sure, but within a week we started finding dead ticks in the driveway, on the ground around her bed and on our back porch some as large as grapes. The land leeches were falling off as Baby sustained her grooming routine with vengeance. Innovation sparked new ways to rid her body of these hostile pests. She utilized the hoods of our vehicles by rubbing her chest and cheeks insatiably back and forth across the fenders and grills crushing ticks to death. I want to believe the warmth from those engines also allowed her a brief respite from the agony. All though these types of ticks do not prefer human hosts * it is a constant sanitation effort around our abode. But how reassuring to see gentle tufts of hair growing back over the ravaged skin.

.....I know without a doubt had we not intervened in the salvation of this immature moose we all would have discovered there is more than one way to die out here. I trust that with our continued efforts Baby will live to create the next generation.

An Orphan Called Chapter One/ Part Two/ Starvation, Not an Option

.....This past week CO has tolerated freezing 40 mile per hour wind gusts with snow pelting her eyes and nostrils as she tries to eat. She has endured forced exertion wading through belly deep powder; consuming life dependent calories. I couldn't sit back and watch her waste away. We took action; I've been a mom too long not to do something. The choices we are making now will determine the quality of the rest of her life. To not eat even for a few days will debilitate her physically as a calf and within the next 16-24 months as a fit breeding cow. If and when she breeds her offspring could suffer frail physiology as well.* We purchased two bales of grass alfalfa hay, sweet to the smell and deep green with nutrients. CO's first reaction to this alien chow was to bed down in it. But it's her body and I trust she knows best. Later I spied her nibbling on the grassy stems but bedding still appeared to be preferred. I have since learned that grasses only make up 2% of a moose's diet.* We then purchased a bag of "deer chow" from the farm store that contained fiber, fat and priceless proteins. Her first feeding was the next morning after my husband, Marti, had started his van to go to work. She sniffed the fragrant pellets that we measured into a large bowl and shoved firmly into the snow next to her bed. We felt the pellets migh be difficut for her to scoop out of the snow and we didn't want her dumping them. She folded legs beneath her and began eating the store bought fare at a delicate pace very becoming of the lady she is. The sound of that engine revving up would soon become her breakfast bell.
.....We chose not to feed her too much, all though I had no idea how much too much was for a moose. I did not want her to depend on this minor sustenance for survival. It is imperative that she wander about during the day exploring and staking her territory looking for pine needles, twigs, and bark to complete her daily meals. A grown moose consumes large quantities of browse to stay healthy (I haven't come across any numbers yet) even a moose calf would need "a lot" to stay alive. Her immature legs and sinewy neck, I noticed, barred her from reaching up to skim conifer needles from most trees, but then again, the same snow that weighed her down also weighed the branches down. Is this Mother Nature's idea of balance? It's also a delicate balance for wild cratures battling the severe cold not to expend more energy than they are capable of gleaning. I trust her natural instincts are guiding her.
.....Next we offered her apples. We cut them in half to allow her mouth some gripping surface and stacked them next to her dinner bowl. She nibbled, munched, then savored this midwinter treat. There are uncultivated apple trees growing about the foothills where we live so I surmissed that the shiny red fruit would not be a foreign fare. And by her enthusiastic indulgence I was correct.
.....The last human influenced victuals we provided was a salt block. I observed her licking the hood and sides of our vehicles. It wasn't hard to figure out that she needed salt in her diet. The road chemicals were definitely not in her best interest, traveling down to the busy highway in search of this necessity would not be either. We positioned the mineral block in her feeding area and it became her new best friend. No more licking toxic road residue.
.....We have done all that we should be doing all the while maintaining our respectful distances from each other. She is still a wild animal and for her future's sake, she needs to stay that way.
.....CO's visits are more frequent and prolonged. I relish her distant company and thank her daily for allowing me to observe her. I have come to believe she is a gift to me from a Higher Source; a symbol of support to pursue passions that have baeen waiting for me for half a century.
..... I have posted part two of my docu-mini-tary on my video site at http://www.metacafe.com/, just type in orphan moose. See you next week.
..... * Ecology and Management of the North American Moose. Franzman Schwartz publisher