Grandma vs. Moose

I went over to my Grandma Aanerud's house last night to watch a basketball game and just hang out. Since my family has abandoned me and gone on vacation I've been feeling pretty lonely. While I was enjoying my freshly bought Subway sandwich G'ma casually said "I was almost done in by a moose the other day."

Firstly you kind of have to know my Grandma A. She is tough as nails and probably has more common sense than most of the rest of us put together. She is about 5'7" or close to it and is 81 years young. She hasn't slowed down one step and keeps several steps in front of most of us.

Sometime during the 2nd quarter of the basketball game we were watching she drops that line on me. She really isn't one for melodramatics or shock value so I asked what she meant. She said that she had been out walking her miniature schnauzer along the Bear River walkway when she came upon a cow moose and her calf. She was walking around a section of the path that loops through a field and then comes back to the main path. When she came upon the moose they were close to where the loop meets the main path almost blocking the way out and there was no other way to get back on the main path. But they had moved a ways off by this point so she thought that she might be able to squeak past unnoticed. She said that she made it about even to where the moose were (which from the sounds of things was probably about 150' away, when the cow put her ears back, lowered her head and started charging.

If any of you have ever seen a moose in person, they are magnificent creatures. They are gigantic and generally speaking their bellies are about at my eye level, which would probably put their heads at around 8 or 9 feet. I never cease to be amazed with how large these animals are. She said that that moose was covering that ground at what seemed like 50 feet a second. This next part is what amazed me, because frankly I would have been trampled and needed a change of britches.

My grandmother raised her arms high above her head (making herself appear as big as possible) and roared like a lion and when the moose had closed in on her and was about 20' feet away veered off to the side and went back to her calf.

I couldn't believe how fast thinking she was while being charged by an angry moose. I can almost say with certainty that I would never have had the presence of mind to act the way she did to literally save her (and Molly the dog's) life.

The whole thing kind of brings new light to the song Grandma got run over by a reindeer, or moose as it were.

But this is just one example of why I look up to my grandma and really enjoy her wisdom. I am extremely glad that she out-foxed the moose that day and is around to tell the story. And now if you are ever charged by a moose, you have at least one idea of how to get out of that situation.

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