They say every picture tells a story, but not every one tells the whole story. On July 4, there appeared online and, later, in newspapers a photograph of a moose lying on a busy Burlington street, its rear hooves propped on a grassy curb, bare head in the roadway. It was, for many who passed by, an oddly disturbing sight.
Shortly after 6 p.m. on Independence Day, a car traveling east on Main Street from downtown was approaching Summit Street near the University of Vermont campus when a moose leaped in front of the vehicle. The driver had zero chance of stopping, according to campus police. The car suffered minor damage; the blow to the moose ultimately proved fatal.
Moose generally are not seen in the Queen City, especially not close to downtown. Their habitat is forested areas devoid of humans. Why, then, did this animal wander into the center of Vermont’s largest city? What drove it to a state of panic and into a busy street? The questions are unanswerable; we can only guess, using the knowledge of experts, based on the established behavior of these ungainly yet weirdly endearing creatures.
Although initial news reports said the animal was a juvenile male, it actually was a “healthy mature cow, or female, weighing about 650 pounds,” according to warden Jeremy Schmid of the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department. It wasn’t lactating, and no calf was seen with it.
Vermont’s moose population has declined to about 2,100 animals — less than half the size of the herd at its 2005 peak. Essex County is home to about half of them, and the vast majority live in the northeast corner of the state. (By comparison, Maine — with four times the land area of Vermont — is home to between 50,000 and 70,000 moose.)
The chief threat to Vermont moose is not cars but winter ticks. These parasites attach by the thousands and hang on for months, causing moose to experience significant blood loss, hair loss and even behavioral change. Moose in Vermont weigh less than they did 20 years ago. A recent study found that only half the calves survive their first winter — most of those deaths are caused by winter ticks.
Main Moose, as we shall call her, presented a rare case, but not in the way one might think.
Nick Fortin, Fish & Wildlife’s deer and moose project leader, said his department hears about a moose wandering through Burlington at least once a year. But those moose generally stick to the fringes of town. They have been spotted in the Centennial Woods Natural Area, for example.
What made the Independence Day incident unusual was the juncture where nature and civilization collided. The majority of moose struck by cars in Vermont are hit as they try to cross interstates or rural roads in the Northeast Kingdom. Fortin was very surprised that “one actually got hit on a secondary road,” he said, since almost all motorist-moose collisions occur where vehicles are traveling at high speed.
Typical of her species, Main Moose would have avoided humans. Unfortunately, she took a route that led her into habitation instead of vegetation.
Ten years ago, a visiting moose provided researchers with a kind of map showing how it got into Burlington. The route follows the Winooski River, then up a drainage near the Cumberland Farms on Riverside Avenue. An old-growth pine forest next to the cemetery at Mount Saint Mary’s Convent is a regular destination. From there, forest coverage is to be had all the way to the UVM campus.
Moose rely on trees for both sustenance and shelter, and they sometimes look for other tall objects, such as utility poles, to provide cover. Main Moose headed to the college grounds. Had her journey finished there, this story might have had a happy ending. Instead, she continued into a populous area where panic set in as she sought a safe place in vain.
Moose generally are not seen in the Queen City, especially not close to downtown.
A campus police officer spotted Main Moose crossing Colchester Avenue near the UVM Medical Center, then walking across the lawn in front of the Fleming Museum of Art. She continued across campus until the officer lost sight of her on South Prospect Street. Minutes later, a radio call came in, saying a car had hit the moose on Main Street.
When police arrived, the driver was out of her car, visibly shaken and upset. The moose “came out of nowhere,” she told police, adding that she never saw the animal as she was passing Summit Street. The collision was jarring; there was a large dent on the driver’s side front panel.
Main Moose was badly hurt but alive, struggling to regain her feet yet unable to do so. Police directed the driver to move her car farther away to provide more space. A crowd was forming, so police blocked off some lanes and diverted traffic.
Seeing that the animal was critically injured, officials decided to humanely dispatch Main Moose. Complications arose. A .22 rifle at hand was deemed insufficient for the task, but a .40 caliber weapon was thought to potentially endanger the growing number of onlookers. Discussions ensued. Burlington police were contacted because the moose now lay outside the jurisdiction of the campus cops. Time passed.
What had brought Main Moose to this fateful place? Collective wisdom suggested that she was spooked by the Independence Day fireworks the previous night. Yet that show ended more than 20 hours before Main Moose bolted onto Route 2.
More likely, what spooked her was people. Many were out and about on the holiday. Once she left the verdant campus, she would have encountered people and traffic along the busy road, which would have been disorienting and terrifying.
Forty-five minutes had elapsed since the collision. As if sensing the need to relieve the authorities of their quandary, Main Moose stopped struggling, laid her head on the pavement and died. A short time later, she was removed to a state facility where a warden from Fish & Wildlife extracted one of her teeth for analysis. Meat was harvested from the carcass under a program called Venison for Vermonters, which distributes roadkill to homeless shelters and food banks.
Every picture tells a story. This is the story the picture did not tell.
This is a reconstruction of events as they might have happened based on information provided by Burlington and University of Vermont police, the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, and experts in animal tracking. It is not a fully factual account.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Wrong Turn | How did a moose end up lost and afraid in Burlington?”
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This article appears in The Animal Issue 2023.
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