Summer Vacation IV

Chapter Four: Animals

Moose are incredibly dangerous animals. People are incredibly stupid animals. (OK... massive over generalization). While we were driving down to the coast, we saw people out of their cars, taking pictures of a female moose and her baby. Aaaahhh ! A few yards down the road, more people were following this moose around, trying to get a shot with both them and the moose. Aaaahhh! I, on the other hand, do not have a death wish. So we took pictures out of the window. When the moose started to cross the road towards us (I could see the whites of his eyes) we quickly drove away, saving ourselves, the camera and the rental car.

I'm not too fond of bears either. While fishing for salmon, Ryan got (?!!?) to see a few of them up close. But this one was far enough away for my own comfort. Ryan spotted it about 1/2 mile out onto the mud flats. At this part of the ocean, the tide moves in and out a long way, and the bear was able to get out onto land in search of salmon. Ryan and I parked the car, crossed the railroad tracks and sat down to watch the bear. As it came closer, we saw that it was a Grizzly and it did have a fish. A group of seagulls were bothering it, trying to get to the fish. The bear would set his catch down and chase the birds, only to have others sneak in on the fish. We watched him for a least thirty minutes. At that point, other people noticed us taking pictures, and stopped to see what was going on. Before you knew it, the road was full of cars, truck, RV's and tour buses, clamoring to get their own view of the bear. We figured that we should charge the tour buses five dollars a head for pointing out this sight to their customers. Of course, the Department of Transportation probably would take it all from us for clogging up the road!