We Hit a Moose in Rural New Hampshire

It was in July 2003, as we were near home after picking up my stepdaughter, then 13, from summer camp. We survived with only a few bruises and abrasions. The moose didn't. It was very traumatic.

“Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.”
—Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods (1864), p. 162

A Moose (Alces Alces) in Jackson, WY, USA. How could anyone not be in awe of this beautiful majestic sentient being? Photo by Cora Leach, 2021; Unsplash

Between 2001 and 2006, I lived with my family in a town of 4,000 people in New Hampshire.

---

The last thing I remember was asking my step-daughter about something that happened at summer camp. We picked her up from Concord, about a 30-minute drive from our home. It was Sunday July 13, 2003; I remember it was evening, around sunset, perhaps a little after, during dusk, just before 9 pm. It was a drive home that we had done hundreds of times. My wife was behind the wheel; I was sitting beside her, and in the back behind her mother was her daughter, 13, and her baby brother, who was one, and snugly strapped in his car seat situated in the middle. We were travelling north on Highway 28, a two-lane road of a type common in New Hampshire, a state whose motto is “Live Free or Die.”¹

A little digression. This saying really has nothing to do with N.H. having no seat-belt law or no requirement to wear a helmets for motorcyclists. Or no sales tax on purchased goods and services. Although there are a lot of jokes about the state motto, its modern meaning, the understanding of what freedom means today and of the consequences of road accidents. The motto has, to a great degree, everything to do with the U.S. Revolutionary War, its War of Independence from Britain. The people of the state take their sense of freedom and independence seriously. This often comes out in eccentric ways. Like the guy who was refused a permit to open a restaurant saying he would then raise pigs in his front yard. I don’t know if he ever did, but he might have. He had a large collection of junked cars around his property.

We were nearing the turnoff for home, Peacham Road. I remember asking my daughter a question, my head turned to my left to talk to her. The next thing I know, I awoke (my wife said I was unconscious for a few minutes), to confusion, not knowing where I was. Or why we were stopped in the middle of the highway and why there was a crowd of people around us, including firefighters, EMTs and other rescue vehicles. I then saw the car had a huge dent down the middle and in the front. The windshield was shattered as was the back window. I asked my wife, “What happened”?

She said, “We hit a moose. We hit a moose, poor thing.”

“I need to get out of the car. I need to see the moose.”

After some difficulty with the door, I was able to exit the car. I walked a few feet to the side of the road, the shoulder. The moose (Alces alces) lay there, quivering. One of the EMTs, a hunter, said this moose is all but dead. My wife told me after the shock had worn off, that right after our car hit the moose, sweeping his legs right under him, he landed right in the car’s centre point—between my wife and me. My wife said that he then stumbled off to the side of the road, where we last saw him. It was a miracle of sorts that the moose landed on our car in the middle, between my wife and I. Hitting a moose is not only deadly for the moose, it can be deadly for the people inside the vehicle. But we survived. We had survived what is called Moose-Motor vehicle Collisions (MMVC)² The moose did not.

I was devastated; and much of what happened afterward is hazy, a blur. I remember hearing an emergency worker asking if I wanted to get checked over at the hospital. I declined; he did a quick neurological check on me and my family. Someone drove us home. I was the most injured, with slight back pain. I was also pulling glass from my forehead for days. I am not sure why. But I was not too concerned with my minor injuries. I was alive; one moose was no longer alive.

This is the first time that a car that I was travelling in had killed an animal, in this case a large non-human one. I hope it is the only time. I know the accident was not my wife’s fault. It was not the moose’s fault either; he just wanted to get to the other side of the road. A normal desire for any non-human animal. It was the first time I had seen a moose while living in NH; I would rather have never seen a moose than to see one under such terrible and tragic circumstances. And in a cosmic joke of sorts, two weeks later a deer bounded in front of my car (a rental), while I was driving to Concord, the state capital. It was fortunate that I was driving slow, since this was on a curving side road and that I was able to brake in time. Needless to say, my nerves took a beating.

What can we do? Land bridges and other such human-made solutions to avoid high-speed vehicles are a good temporary solution to reducing the odds of a car or truck hitting a moose or deer or other non-human animal just crossing a roadway. To get to where he wanted to go.

This happened in rural N.H. We lived in a town of four thousand people. Small. But it was a place where people lived, a kind of rural bedroom community. People had to travel on the highways to go to work, to go to school, to buy food, to buy other consumer items, to go to religious services and to visit friends. People drive fast on these roads, because the distances between home and these places are often great.

In my dream world, over the rainbow, there would be no need for cars, trucks, any motorized vehicles travelling at high speeds. No animals would face the threats of being struck, hit, run over, maimed and killed. We humans would live in peace and harmony with ourselves, with non-human animals, with all species, and with Nature. This is my dream of a world just over the rainbow.

I write about this dream of mine, because I am now rethinking my relationship with cities, and whether it would be much better and healthier for us and our Earth to have small sustainable communities. Ones that are self-sufficient to a large degree, but still dependent on other communities. An inter-dependency and connection built more on cooperation than on competition. Where it becomes imperative to live in harmony with ourselves and with Nature.

This is not a new idea; it is in fact an old one, a very ancient one, but one that has greater appeal and urgency today. Where so many people feel the pull to have a greater connection to the natural world. I know; it sounds so unreal, so disconnected from our modern human-manufactured world. We have it exactly backwards; we have created an artificial world of cities and civilization, one in which the natural world needs to be conquered, dominated and exploited. Does not this idea, this way of living, sound unnatural? Unhealthy?

I will write about my thoughts and ideas on this subject and share them with you in the coming weeks. I would now like to end with a classic rock love song, “These Eyes” (1968),” sung by Burton Cummings of The Guess Who, a well-known Canadian band with many hit songs in that period of great songs. I know it’s a song about human love, but I still can remember looking into the eyes of the moose. So, yes, I am taking some liberties here, pushing the boundaries of the song’s meaning.

These eyes, watched you bring my world to an end
This heart, could not accept and pretend

Merci et à bientôt
Born at 315 ppm
Now at 425 ppm

1. From NH.gov: The words "Live Free or Die," written by General John Stark, July 31, 1809, shall be the official motto of the state.

It was the 1945 Legislature that gave New Hampshire its official motto and emblem, as World War II approached a successful end.

The motto became "Live Free Or Die," as once voiced by General John Stark, the state’s most distinguished hero of the Revolutionary War, and the world famous Old Man of the Mountain was voted the official state emblem.

The motto was part of a volunteer toast which General Stark sent to his wartime comrades, in which he declined an invitation to head up a 32nd anniversary reunion of the 1777 Battle of Bennington in Vermont, because of poor health. The toast said in full: "Live Free Or Die; Death Is Not The Worst of Evils." The following year, a similar invitation (also declined) said: "The toast, sir, which you sent us in 1809 will continue to vibrate with unceasing pleasure in our ears, "Live Free Or Die; Death Is Not The Worst Of Evils.".

2. From J Am Coll Surg 2019 Jun;228(6): 941-947: Moose-motor vehicle collisions (MMVC) are especially dangerous to vehicle occupants because of the height and mass of the animal, which often collapses the roof and has a direct impact into the passenger compartment.

[…]

For all of NE, the annual incidence of reported MMVC has declined from a peak of >1,200 in 1998, but has still averaged >500 over the last 5 years, predominantly in ME, NH, and VT. Public education may have contributed to the decline, but the moose population has also apparently decreased due to environmental changes. In NE, MMVCs are most frequent in the summer months and evening hours.