Animal Sensitivity Training
by Erik "The Professor" Koenig
We, as members of the human race, have this perception that because there is no direct evidence that any other species on this planet matches our cognitive abilities, their petty little existence should be at the mercy of our own immediate needs. When a curious little bug, known in rural country as a "no seeum" buzzes incessantly around your face, most people will swat or crush it without allowing even a moment to consider that they have just erased a life from this world. Now an interesting phenomenon is that humans tend to believe that this single-mindedness with their own significance is unique to our species. Well I am here to tell you that this attitude is universal amongst all living things. You see this demonstrated when you encounter an animal that has the ability to hurt us, especially one that can with complete indifference swat us aside like a "noseeum". Let us take, for example, the moose whose capacity to directly impact the course of a human life is in direct relation to his bulk and it's proximity to your unprotected person as well as his attitude on that particular meeting. Let me go ahead and tell you about an incident that happened to me sometime in the last fifteen years on a trip I made to one of the northern Canadian provinces that left me in doubt on the significance of my role in this universe.
I was taking a load of cars in a lift-gate trailer up to a remote shanty town in northern Canada so that a tire company could do some cold weather testing with their new tread on some frozen lake. It kind of sounded like a fool's errand to me, but I couldn't understand why I even cared to thought twice about it. It doesn't matter where someone wants something hauled or why as long as it gets me a load with a lot of miles, very few drops and this load fit that bill. This load was from "The Motor City" and I was headed to the Northwest Territory of Canada, close to the border with Alaska. The trip was over a couple of thousand miles and I was really looking forward to running out west away from the big cities of the east where I'd been bouncing around for the last few months. I love running up in Canada. It's so clean; the air is so crisp and fragrant. Even though it's cold, I like to run with my windows open. I just turn the heat on in the cab and direct the air down to the floor panel. Popeye, my canine companion, likes to lie on the floor by the passenger door and look out the little porthole window that enables me to see my blind spot. It's like his version of watching TV. He enjoys the sensation of the hot air blowing over his back while he looks out at the landscape streaming past. He just gets this look of total contentment that mirrors my own. This has become his favorite resting place in the rig and so I've placed his little bed down there.
I unloaded my cars just a few miles outside of the town, dropped the trailer in an old, rusty warehouse, and bobtailed over to a small lodge hotel. After a couple of days in the hotel I started to understand the concept of "cabin fever". The TV in the room had satellite, but out of the couple hundred channels, most were sports, info-mercials, and cooking shows. The sports featured on most of the channels were those that had such a small audience that this was the only way they could get any publicity at all. Then there were the requisite hockey channels. I mean I was in Canada after all. The first day I stayed in the hotel I got burned out on TV. Then I went down the hotel bar and proceeded to take the first step into becoming a local. I drank myself into a comfortable haze where every conversation around me became much more interesting. I'd never seen a town with such beautiful people, at least what I could see of them through the fog in my head. I learned all the intricacies of laying a trap line from a gentleman who punctuated every sentence with a healthy dose of expletives. He looked as worn as shoe leather and his skin was so dark and lined that it reminded me of the bark on the fir trees outside surrounding the lodge. The days and nights blended into each other until they became indistinguishable. In this land of the midnight sun, above the Arctic Circle, we were in that part of the year where we could only enjoy a few hours of sunlight.
So I think it was about two o'clock in the afternoon when I staggered outside to get away from the oppressive and unrelenting heat from the wood stove in the center of the large common room with a bar along the longest wall. I just needed to feel the sharp air sending shards of pain deep into my chest with every intake of breath to push aside the fog of inebriation. I planned on walking around the outside of the lodge to my room and go through the exterior entrance rather than the hallway inside. Using the brisk walk to get my blood pumping I felt my thoughts clear and focus. I entered my room with the key, whistled for Popeye, and reached behind the door for his leash. As I snapped the leash on his collar I caught his look of reproach, clearly he was upset with the amount of attention he was getting from me. As I opened the door and braced myself for the inevitable icy blast, I began to apologize to him for my obvious failings as a canine master. I started to promise him a new chew toy and a really good belly rub when we got back from our walk. I looked around to determine which direction we should go on our walk taking into account my weakened and intoxicated state and the temperature outside. I concluded that if I headed around the back of the cabin and worked my way up the hill we would be afforded some protection from the wind. Then we would be headed down hill on our way back. I started off in this direction continuing to apologize and explain to Popeye how important he was to me and how he was the greatest companion any trucker could have. As I rounded the corner behind the lodge I observed a young Eskimo girl sitting outside her room on the second floor looking down on us with some curiosity. That's when I realized that I probably looked ridiculous. I mean here I was a large, bearded trucker with a John Deere hat mashed down over my ears, slipping and sliding on the ice in my cowboy boots while I carried on a conversation with my black and tan pug, who was doing his best to lift his belly off of the ground and not drag his privates through the snow. I shut up quickly, turned and offered a quick wave of my hand and headed up a little plowed track that led up the hill towards a shed on top where I had been told they stored salt for the roads.
After getting about a hundred yards from the hotel, wondering why I had been so ambitious when I started out, I looked off to my right down towards town and immediately stopped in my tracks. Popeye, who was following me reluctantly in the trail I was making in the fresh snow, was so close to my heels that when I stopped he ran into the back of my legs. I blinked a few times and rubbed my eyes. I must be far drunker than I originally thought. There casually sauntering down the road like it was the most natural thing and he did it every day was an enormous pink bear. His hair was as pink as a Barbie doll package. He ambled along like he had a specific destination in mind, and I saw him turn down an alley between the general store and the post office. From my vantage point I could see a dumpster at the end of the alley next to the back door of one of the greasy spoon restaurants on the only other street in this town. This was obviously where he was headed, as the smell of fried food penetrated even my insensitive nostrils. I continued to watch him for a few minutes, puzzling over the bizarre color of his pelt. It wasn't an even color, but looked more like pink tiger stripes radiating from somewhere on the back of his neck.
After the initial shock of seeing a pink bear started to wane a thought worked its way to the forefront of my consciousness. What were the chances that this bear wasn't alone? I was smack down in some of the most rugged country in the world and bears were commonplace up here. A panic started to take over and I quickly glanced around and jumped a little when I saw the dog leash stretched taut pointing directly into a snow bank on the side of the trail. Popeye was no longer visible and for a split second I was afraid some eagle or other denizen of the forest had snatched him away leaving just the leash while I was staring after the pink bear. I felt like I was in a fairy tale. Then I saw the end of the leash that was stuck in the snow start to move. The leash started to inexplicably follow some movement underneath the snow. It looked like a fishing line stretched taut in a still lake after a fish strike. Just like a trout darting back and forth trying to escape a hook caught in its' lip. I tugged on the end of the leash and began reeling it in. After a few seconds a bedraggled Popeye burst through the snow looking miserable and forlorn. His skin was soaked through and I could only imagine how cold he must be. I stooped down and scooped him up under my arm like a football. I then turned back towards the lodge, completely sober now. I slipped and slid my way back down the trail, fearfully glancing back over my shoulder half expecting to see a hungry bear with kaleidoscope fur lumbering down the trail after me, hungry for a tender morsel of pug with a main course of fat trucker rump roast.
As I approached the hotel I saw the same Eskimo girl sitting out on the porch above me. Out of breath I warned her that there was a weird muticolored bear wandering around the village streets and she should probably duck back inside before he decided to forage for more substantial fare. When I got to the part about the peculiar color of his fur, she chuckled with a twinkle in her eye.
"The pink color in his fur comes from a paint dye that the wildlife managers shoot them with." The look of obvious confusion on my face led her to further explain, "When a bear gets a taste for human trash and food scraps it's like their version of illegal drugs. They get a taste for it and it becomes kind of an addiction. The first offenders are shot with a red dye, tranquilized and then transported by truck hundreds of miles from here up north. They are outfitted with a radio collar for identification purposes. If they somehow make it back down here and are identified then they will be killed because they become too accustomed to human contact." I nodded my head, beginning to understand. "So the pink tinge is actually red dye that's washed away, right?", I asked. She nodded. "Thank you for that because I was beginning to doubt my sanity for a minute there", I said and I waved at her as I left, eager to get warm.
I quickly made my way back to the room and gave myself a steaming hot shower to warm up and wash away the last vestiges of intoxicated fear. I then plopped Popeye down into a warm bath and vigorously dried him with a clean, fluffy towel. He had such a goofy canine grin that I could tell he was rapidly forgiving me for ignoring him for a few hours and then taking him on such a painfully cold walk. I could hear a curious tune wafting in from the bedroom and I realized it was my cell phone. I answered it and found out that the engineers from Detroit were done and I could come and load the cars up and then embark on the second leg of this trip. I was going to head down to Arizona, out to a desert racing track where they would again stress and test the same tires and gather all sorts of I'm sure pertinent and important data. Since my livelihood is based on the integrity of tires, I can truly appreciate all the trials they were putting these little rubber marvels through.
I went ahead and checked out of the room, and loaded Popeye and our things into the tractor. I headed on over to the warehouse to get my trailer, glad to be moving again. The nomadic life of a long haul trucker means that it doesn't take long before we crave the rumble of a diesel engine, and the sight of the world framed through our windshield over the long hood.
I loaded and tied down the half a dozen cars that were headed down towards the low country. I had to warm the tie down chains with a propane torch because they were frozen stiff. As I crawled underneath the car body feeling for the holes in the frame designed for my tie downs, large icy drops of water fell down onto my forehead and neck. Once I had them secured I shut the back door and climbed up behind the wheel.
I made a few notations in my logbook, getting it current and accounting for the time I spent in the hotel. I dropped my receipt for the hotel in the envelope with the manifest and tucked it behind the passenger seat in a special pocket sewn together out of a pair of overalls that hang on the seat back where I put my calculator, logbook, pens and pencils and envelopes for my bills of lading. I reached down and poured a steaming hot cup of coffee out of my old worn Stanley thermos and placed my cup inside of a roll of duct tape that sits on the floor board between the two seats and has been the best cup holder I've ever had. Taking one last look at my atlas and getting the highway numbers memorized, I pushed in the red and yellow air brake buttons and eased out on the clutch. I headed down the slick black road towards the Canadian freeway. It was still perpetually dark outside and as I eased out onto the highway I had to glance again at my watch to determine it was indeed early evening. I did a few calculations to figure out the time difference where I was heading and reset my watch for that time zone. I reached up and turned on the CB, adjusted the squelch and set the volume low so that it didn't disturb my thoughts as I settled in for a long drive, the bread and butter of the long haul trucker.
About a hundred miles went by and very few other vehicles. This stretch of road was so infrequently traveled that it wasn't unusual to drive a couple of hours and not see but maybe one or two trucks and maybe one local car. I eased around the curves that were coming more often now that I was descending down out of the high country. I saw another rig approaching me on the opposite side of the road. It was a big, beautiful Western Star with one of those Australian looking cattle bumpers that protects the hood and headlights from errant deer and elk. I heard the squawk of the CB as a deep voice with a Canadian accent boomed through the speaker. He announced, "Hey southbound, keep a sharp eye peeled. I saw a moose crossing the road a few miles behind me and he might still be in the area when you get there. You might want to slow it down some." I thanked him for the warning and relayed to him that the coast was clear all the way back to my exit.
I backed out of the throttle and down shifted to the next gear, keeping an eye on my speedometer. It wouldn't be a good thing to run around a corner unawares and catapult a thousand pound moose over my hood. As I entered the next curve slowing down to what I thought might be a ridiculous speed if there was nothing there, I saw him.
He was an old master of the forest. He stood at least six feet from the ground to his shoulders and his rack stretched the same distance across his breadth. He was standing still in the center of my side of the highway. He didn't appear to be in any hurry to get out of my way and I eased my way up to him. He turned his regal head to look at me with absolute indifference. He then turned back in the direction he had been facing and continued to remain stationary. I was completely stopped now and I set my air brakes while I turned on my four way flashers. I thought the sound of my air brakes would motivate him to move, but he continued to ignore me. I got on the radio and made a call out to anyone approaching about the hazard I was facing. Then I sat there and admired the beauty of his majestic appearance.
He bowed his head down and turned his rack and scratched his back side with a tine with amazing dexterity. I sat there a few moments and then started to think that this guy may not have been in a hurry, but the longer we sat here the more there was a chance that some other vehicle would come up behind me and slide in the ice right into the back of my rig. We were a hazard just sitting there and I thought of some different ways I could motivate him to exit the roadway. I entertained for a moment the idea of stepping down and shooing him like you would a small deer or a bird. As I unbuckled my safety belt, he detected movement through the windshield and turned in my direction. I quickly changed my mind as he ponderously swayed his enormous antlers from side to side. I could see his nostrils flex and flare as he tried to determine the identity of this insignificant animal squatting before him on round rubber legs. I saw a flash of light behind me in my rear view mirror and saw a small compact car easing up the road behind me. I couldn't get his attention with my radio since he didn't have an antenna indicating he was wired for a Citizens Band radio and I sat amazed as he eased around me on the shoulder, intent on getting around this annoying trucker who decided to park on a highway. He proceeded slowly, almost crawling up towards the rear of the moose. Mr. Moose actually had difficulty looking over his shoulder at the car as it slid past his rear, because the size of his antlers interfered with the turning of his head. As soon as the car was around him it took off and accelerated. I let out the breath I was holding in disbelief. That was it. I was sure that this moose had no intention of moving for me and I needed to get on down the road. My wildlife viewing moment was over. I reached up and grasped the cord for my air horn. Taking one last look at the moose I pulled down and let out a long, loud blast. The effect was instantaneous. He did a stiff legged hop and seemed to rock back on his rear legs. He reared up like Silver on the old Lone Ranger show and turned his enormous head in my direction. As he came down he lunged forwards and smashed into the hood of my truck. I was too stunned to move. He then pulled back and lunged forwards again, rocking his head right and left, raking his tines into my fiberglass hood. Over and over he lunged and smashed and twisted and plunged and I could hear the tearing of metal and plastic and a horribly strange sound began repeating itself, louder and louder. I quickly realized that he had actually shoved my radiator back into the fan and the fan was scratching and scraping across the metal of the radiator and the torn fiberglass. I turned the key and shut the engine off my heart beating a staccato tempo. The moose surveyed the damage he had done and casually sauntered off the right side of the road and the forest swallowed him up.
Hours went by while the cold settled in. I had stepped down out of the cab and I could see that the damage he had inflicted on my rig guaranteed that I wouldn't be going anywhere. I got back in the truck and tried to raise some help on the radio with no success. Then I checked my cell phone only to discover I had no signal. I crawled in back in my sleeper and pulled the blanket off the bed and wrapped myself in it, pulling Popeye into my lap. It took another hour before I detected lights approaching me from behind. It was a Canadian Mountie who got out of his patrol car and walked up to my window. I opened my door and stepped out.
"What did you hit?" He asked me looking at the front of my torn hood.
"Nothing", I said. "This moose was standing in the center of the road and he just attacked me."
"You hit your air horn, didn't you?" he laughed.
"Well, yeah I did." I said sheepishly. "Why?"
"Well, a moose hears that air horn as a challenge. He was just reacting to what he perceived as a threat to his dominance in this section of the woods."
Shaking his head, the mountie headed back to his car to call for a tow truck. I stood there feeling foolish that I thought my schedule would be more important than the moose's itinerary.