One of the best side effects to living above 10,500’ is having wildlife as neighbors. The moose love to hang out in the willows behind The Mountain Orchid facility. On this particular morning, we had 3 large, mature male moose and one female moose bedded down behind the facility. What magnificent creatures!
It was even more special because our good friend, Sarah Noonan (who is an amazing photographer and helped build our website) was visiting in hopes to catch a glimpse of our local moose. She brought her large wildlife lens all the way from Florida. Unfortunately, on day five, there were still no moose sightings. Then on her last morning an hour before she had to leave, the four moose decided to put on a show for her!
The three male moose snacked on the willows, while the female moose ignored them and wandered across the river by herself. It’s not mating season for the moose, so she was not interested in the three males following slowly behind her.
It is also rare to have three male moose hanging together, but since they are not competing for the female’s attention, they are able to coexist this time of year. One of the males was larger and more mature than the other two. His rack was amazing! The male moose sheds its antlers after the mating season. This usually occurs just before winter and this is one of the ways that they conserve energy for the long winter ahead. It isn’t until springtime that the antlers begin to regrow. They take between three and five months to develop into a full set of antlers. You could tell these three males were close to dropping their racks for the winter.
A husky who lives in town noticed the moose and strategically started to stalk them. As the husky slowly crept down the river bank towards the moose, the moose started to catch wind of the husky. They could not see the husky but they could smell him. The three male moose stood up and started stomping around sensing danger was close by. Right then, the husky emerged from the river about ten feet away and began barking at the moose.
The three large males started howling back and the largest male mounted the younger male. I have never seen them do that before and wondered if they were trying to look larger to the husky. Wolves are the moose only predator, so needless to say they get nervous around dogs, especially huskys! Then the three moose stood in a triangle formation with their butts together in the center and their antlers out for protection. They remained in this protective stance for hours.
The husky eventually snapped back into his domestic self and realized he probably shouldn’t be starting a fight with these three huge beasts! As the husky retreated, the moose laid down in the triangle formation taking turns having one of them stand on guard, while the other two rested. This went on throughout the rest of the day.
The moose love to come out of the willows to lick the salt off the cars from the snowy roads so many times the cars parked at the facility get a good moose car wash. They have huge tongues that lap up the salt and leave very obvious tongue marks on our car doors. We appreciate the wash, but wish they would do the whole car, then tend just to lick the bottom half!
We feel very blessed to live among these beautiful animals and purposefully chose this location to build our future business.
