More about the Moose
When I left off last time,
I didn’t know where the moose was or if it was dead, wounded, or
what. Doug told me it was down, presumably dead in the yard, and
that he’d shot it twice in the head. He explained the other two
shots I’d heard as a first warning shot and an accidental discharge as
he attempted to uncock the revolver. I noticed the blood on his
thumb, and he gave me a closer look at the thumbnail Koji had torn
loose while Doug was freeing him from the chain. I sent him to
the bathroom for first aid.
Before
he was back with a bandage wrapped around his thumb, I had stuck my
head out the door and shot the first picture of the moose. It lay
in the hollow of the packed snow path, between two piles of snow that
had been shoveled from the roof and the path. Koji’s chain is
visible across the bottom of the picture and looped around the tree on
the right. The stump and the other tree behind which I’d seen him
dodging the moose’s hooves are out of frame to the right.
I felt sad about the dead moose and guilty because I’d let Koji out
there and started it all. I hadn’t seen the moose before I put
Koji on his chain and let him out, and when I first realized from
Koji’s frantic bark that there was a moose there, I’d opened the door
and called Koji to me. But when he moved toward me, the moose
attacked him. He had dodged back behind the stump then, and when
I heard his yelps as the hooves hit him, I’d retreated and closed the
door. That was a cowardly move, but I suppose that distracting
the moose by getting it to charge me would have been a foolish one,
especially since Koji did such a good job of dodging it. I was
wearing slippers, not boots, so I’d probably have been on my butt after
one step on the packed snow.
The moose looked big lying on the ground, and had looked a lot bigger
on those stilt-like legs. It had scared me in life, and now lying
there dead it presented a different problem. I knew I
needed to call either the state troopers or Fish and Game to report
it. It was Sunday, so the Fish and Game department offices were
closed. It wasn’t an emergency, so I needed the number for
trooper dispatch. My eyes wouldn’t focus. I handed the
phone book to Doug. The number he found was in Anchorage, so I
found some better light and settled down with the phone book for a few
minutes and finally found the right pages. The dispatcher said a
trooper would be here soon.
Before the trooper got here, Koji went to the door wanting out.
When he stuck his head out there and caught sight and scent of the
moose, however, he decided his business could wait. I didn’t
really like that idea, but wasn’t able to persuade him that the moose
was no longer a threat. He has been housebroken for years, and
hasn’t let that training lapse even when left alone for hours. I
was hoping we would get the moose out of there before Koji couldn’t
hold it any longer.
We hadn’t looked at the clock at all that morning, so when the trooper
showed up sometime before noon, we were unable to answer his first
question, what time the shooting took place. Finally, I think he
put down 10 AM, a reasonable estimate I guess. We did okay with
the rest of his questions about our names and all, until he started
asking why Doug thought he had to shoot the moose. To us, it
sorta went without saying, so when we were compelled to say, the
answers didn’t come easy. Doug talked about defending the dog and
himself, said he knew the moose had been about to charge him, and the
trooper just asked how he knew. I pointed out that we had both
been charged before by moose, and Doug told the guy that the moose’s
ears had been down. I don’t know if he thought about mentioning
its hackles being up or anything else of that sort. The trooper
was still asking questions.
Finally, in answer to one of those questions, Doug said that the moose
had been too close for him to be able to get the dog off the chain and
into the house, and Trooper Jones breathed a sigh of relief, grinned
and told him that was the right answer. He wrote it down and
left, saying that dispatch had already called “a charity” to come and
salvage the meat. They should be here, “soon.”
About an hour and a half later, after another of those abortive trips
to the door to try and let Koji out to do his business, I phoned
dispatch again and asked if she had any idea when they would be here,
and if they needed directions to find us. She just said that
there were several road kills and it was a busy day for the
charities. Someone should be here, “soon.”
We waited some more. Then the phone rang. It was
dispatch. She said that one of my neighbors was on the
line. The person sent to get the moose had stopped in there
because he couldn’t find us. Could she patch him through, she
asked. Okay, I said. The neighbor turned out to be Frank,
across the highway. He was already living in the neighborhood
when we moved in here just before Doug’s second birthday. He had
been a nosy busybody until his heart trouble began tending to keep him
at home. After that, he’d gotten into some sort of dispute with
some other neighbors who lived near him. I recall a summer
barbecue in those people’s yard that was interrupted by gunfire from
Frank’s yard. That was over a decade ago, and I’ve not seen much
of Frank since then. I hadn’t known for sure that he was alive
until he got patched through to me that day from the troopers.
It took the old codger a minute or two to catch on to who I am, and a
minute or two more for me to explain that I was no longer living on his
side of the highway but had moved over here six years ago to housesit
for Mark. Fortunately, he knew where Mark lived, so he could tell
“John”, the son of some old friends of his from Michigan, how to find
us. That “John” turned out to be the man I know as Dancing Bear,
a knifemaker from Talkeetna that we’d gotten to know when Greyfox had
been running his roadside stand there on Main Street. I had last
seen Dancing Bear a couple of years ago when I’d taken Sephiroth up
there on leave, to get Masamune, his great sword, sharpened.
Koji started jumping around and barking as soon as Dancing Bear’s van
pulled in the driveway. He has always been noisy about
visitors. He’s not yet fully convinced that we want
the garbage truck to steal our trash each week. Doug restrained
the dog for the few moments that Dancing Bear was in here while we said
our hellos and discussed what had to be done. Whomever it was
that the troopers had called originally, probably someone from the
Talkeetna food bank, had called Dancing Bear because they already had
more moose than they could handle in one day. Dancing Bear said
he has been teaching skinning and butchering classes in Talkeetna for a
while, since his knife shop burned down last fall. The word that
Dancing Bear got was that there was a moose at mile 90. He
assumed it was a roadkill on the highway, and had spent a considerable
amount of time trying to find it before going to Frank’s house to call
trooper dispatch for directions.
We trooped out there and stood around looking at the moose, which
Dancing Bear said was a young bull, probably about three years old and
12 to 15 hundred pounds (if memory serves–I could have gotten that
weight part wrong, wasn’t paying attention). We discussed that
hollow it lay in and the difficulty of maneuvering it for skinning and
butchering. Dancing Bear had a “come-along” hand winch with a
cable too short to be of any use in moving the moose into a better
position, so he decided to dismember it where it lay. I explained
that my asthma and COPD would keep me from doing any heavy work, but
that Doug and I would help as much as we could. He looked
relieved at that, having expected to be doing the whole job by
himself. Since he didn’t know anyone who wanted the hide, instead
of unzipping it down the belly and preserving the skin, he decided it
would be simpler to unzip along the spine because of the way the
carcass was situated.
All this time, Koji had been making a yapping racket in the
house. When I came in for my leather gloves and my neat little
Kit Wray skinning knife, I discovered the hard way that he hadn’t been
able to “hold it” any longer. Being somewhat light-blind when I
came in out of the snow, I stepped in a pool of his stress diarrhea and
tracked it for a couple of footprints before I noticed. That was
the first time that day that I was thankful for the sinus infection
that has had me limited to about half of one olfactory sensor for a
month or so. Figuring that the mess could wait better than
Dancing Bear and the moose could, I left it, grabbed the gloves and
skinner, went back out and cleaned my boot in some snow well away from
the moose.
After
Dancing Bear unzipped the hide down the back, for a while he worked on
skinning the left, uppermost side of the belly up near the head while I
worked on skinning the back at the rear end. When we got to the
point where we would have been getting in each other’s way, I left the
skinning to him and at Doug’s suggestion got the camera. The kid
knew I’d be wanting to blog this.
Doug’s help with the skinning consisted mostly of applying tension to
try and keep the stiffening legs out of the way so Dancing Bear could
reach the more difficult areas. He was trying to get the hide off
without nicking the guts or any internal organs, but just about the
time I took the pic at left he punctured the abdomen and let out a
hissing stream of gas that made him and Doug turn a little green around
the gills and wrinkle their noses. That was the second of several
times that day that I was glad I had this sinus infection.
As Dancing Bear worked on skinning the left forequarter, he found a
bullet hole near where the neck and shoulder were joined.
Apparently, Doug’s first shot missed the head by a little bit, and went
through the lungs instead.
In the shot at right, Dancing Bear was working on removing the left
hindquarter, carving around the hip joint while Doug pulled on the leg
to keep it out of his way. When it came loose suddenly, the hoof
slipped out of Doug’s grasp and knocked him back against the old truck
parked there. He remarked on the irony of getting stomped by a
dead moose.
The upper side of the moose was skinned and the left hind- and
forequarters removed and stowed in Dancing Bear’s van before we started
trying to turn the carcass over to work on its right side. I
crouched at the head and cranked on it as Doug and Dancing Bear used
the legs for leverage, and we flopped it over finally.
The
pic at left, of Dancing Bear skinning the right hindquarter, shows how
deep the snowpack is here. Just above the trailing moosehide on
the right is the side mirror on the old pickup truck in our driveway.
As he worked, he talked, explaining what he was doing. Often, he
would explain that what he was doing wasn’t the “best” or usual way of
doing it, because of the awkward situation working in that little bowl
between snowbanks. I admired his poise and perseverence when,
immediately after saying he was having Doug hold the leg out of the way
so he wouldn’t nick the
belly, he made that gassy little nick. He kept right on working
and talking that time, and also later on, just after explaining the
importance of not piercing any of the guts, when he did so and flooded
the body cavity with cloudy yellow-green liquid that caused both men to
blanch and gag. Yaay, sinus infection!
With
the hide and all four legs off, Dancing Bear started removing the
head. He tried for a while cutting between vertebrae with one of
his handmade knives, then gave up that effort and got out his
saw. Through the entire procedure, I got the impression that he
both understood and respected the “right” way, the most elegant, expert
way of doing it, but that for him expediency was more important this
time.
The tool kit he brought with him was in a small black bag, and he joked
about his “doctor’s bag” when he first set it down. It included
two knives he probably had made himself, both with old-fashioned
high-carbon steel blades. They take a fine sharp edge but don’t
hold one for long. He stopped frequently to sharpen the blades,
using a pair of steel sharpening rods he had set at precise angles in a
block of wood. None of the awkwardness of wrestling with the
moose and its body parts was evident in his quick flashing movements as
he sharpened his knives. It’s obvious that making and maintaining
the blades are more his thing than is their practical usage.
After he
and Doug had carried the meaty quarters to the van and dragged away the
hide, Doug commented that what was left didn’t look much like an
animal. Dancing Bear paused and looked at it and said it sorta
looked like a big tadpole.
We all took a little breather at this point, and discussed how best to
contain the gutpile for disposal, before he cut into the belly and
released it. I brought out a cup of hot tea for Dancing Bear
after gulping down my own cupful in the kitchen.
Doug worked our sled out of the snowpack it was stuck in and replaced
its broken pull rope while Dancing Bear drank his tea, then we spread
Dancing Bear’s tarp over the sled and tucked its edge under the moose
belly to catch the guts. Some scraps that were lying about went
in the sled first, then all three of us wrestled the slippery moose
abdomen into position over the tarp and Dancing Bear had a second cup
of tea.
With
all the relatively neat, clean and easy part of the job out of the way,
he was in no apparent hurry to get on with the dirty work. Saying
that the blood already on his clothes would stink up his cabin more
than enough, he took off his shirt and tossed it aside before getting
into “the stinky stuff.”
This might be a good place to talk about the weather. In the
weeks before this, we had about ten days of subzero weather, down to
minus 30 a few times and never getting much above minus ten. The
moose incident came during a brief warmer period before the weather
went back down to about minus twenty for a few days. On the day
when we were out there butchering the moose, it was above zero, and
almost up to freezing — about 26° around sunset when I looked at the
thermometer after we had finished.
Here at
left, Doug pulls back on the ribs so Dancing Bear can cut loose the
internal organs for removal. This pic was taken just before the
knife slipped and released the nasty flood of smelly liquid.
Dancing Bear mentioned several times what good shooting it had been,
because that lung shot caused the moose to bleed out into the body
cavity, improving the quality of the meat. Doug humbly explained
it was an accident, that the lung shot had been aimed at the moose’s
head. Dancing Bear also spoke at length about the inferior
quality of most of the roadkill moose he has to deal with: bone
chips and bloody meat, as well as having to work in many places that
end up being even less convenient than our front yard.
I was delighted when he asked me if we wanted to keep any of the
moose. Generally, people aren’t supposed to get to keep any of
what they kill out of season, whether it’s accidentally on the highway,
or in defense of life and property. Luckily for us, it had been a
bad day for roadkill. I said I’d love to have the liver and
tongue, knowing that most people don’t like those parts. Dancing
Bear had already been asked by someone in Talkeetna for the head and
tongue, but he said I was welcome to the liver and other organ meat
because he has gout and can’t eat it.
He asked if I know how to cook kidneys. I said no, and started to
tell him I had a few cookbooks (a few feet of shelves of cookbooks is
more like it), when he broke in and said, “just boil the piss out of
‘em.”
A friend of Dancing Bear’s, a Native woman in Talkeetna, had asked him
to save the gut for her. He said she made “something” out of it,
but didn’t know what. Here at the right he has just stripped out
all the fully- and partially-formed “moose nuggets” from the gut.
We talked about how important it is not to waste stuff like this, and
we both expressed regret that we weren’t equipped to deal with the
hide.
In a comment on one of Greyfox’s updates, someone asked if we eat the
hooves, too, probably in response to his report that we’d kept the
kidneys and testicles. Greyfox replied facetiously that we boil
the hooves down for glue. Actually, Dancing Bear said he intends
to steam and soften the hooves and form them into knife handles.
There was also a comment asking about the rack, the antlers many people
keep and display as trophies. It being winter, this bull had shed
last year’s rack and hadn’t started growing a new one yet.
As
we worked, we’d spent quite a bit of time discussing what to do with
the gutpile. Getting it out of the yard is important because
bears will be waking up soon and it will be an attractive source of
food. They’re always hungry in early spring after that long
hibernation. We don’t want them coming in the yard looking for
food.
We decided to dump the guts out in the muskeg. Doug scouted and
found a place up the road where a snowmachine trail cut across the
roadside snow berm. Dancing Bear gathered up the sides of the
tarp and steadied the load as Doug pulled it. They took it maybe
thirty feet out onto the muskeg and dumped it.
As
Dancing Bear put away his tools and prepared to leave, Doug used the
snow scoop to clear away some of the bloody snow from the path.
It looks a lot better than this now, cleaner, because it has snowed
another foot or so since then and covered most of the gore.
However, there is still some important cleanup needing to be
done. Dancing Bear had tossed a big mass of clotted blood from
the body cavity out under the trees by the woodpile for the ravens and
magpies to scavenge. Then it snowed and covered it up. Then
Koji, whose chain just barely reaches that far, dug some of it
up. He has brought a few of the icy clots (or bloody snowballs)
to the door, but I won’t let him bring any in. Consequently, in
the yard and around the door are several bloody patches that could
attract bears.
I had a brief hypnogogic flash of dream as I was awakening one
morning. In the dream I heard a scratching at the door and went
to let Koji in, and there was a bear on the doorstep. I hope Doug
will get the bloody snow cleared up soon. Having a door that
doesn’t latch is convenient for the cats. All they have to do is
lean against it and it opens to let them in. It would be far too
convenient for any bear that wanted in, too, in my opinion. I
don’t want bears in here even more than I don’t want them in the yard.
That
night after Dancing Bear left, I had two trays of meat. One of
them held the organs: liver, heart, kidneys and testicles.
The other one held both tenderloins, which Dancing Bear had generously
given us unasked.
First, I trimmed the fat, veins and arteries off the heart, stuffed it
with onions, celery and herbs, placed it on a rack in a covered baking
dish and poured tomato soup over it before baking it. Eventually,
I sliced it for sandwiches and used the scraps, the stuffing, and the
remaining liquid as a base for soup.
While the heart was baking, I trimmed and sliced the liver and put it
in the freezer. I removed the veins and membranes from the
testicles and refrigerated them. I got out The Joy of Cooking
and looked up kidneys. It recommended marinating them overnight
in “acidulated water.” The only vinegar I had on hand came from
pickled jalapenos, so that’s what I used to acidulate the water.
By then, I was too exhausted to deal with the loins. That tray
went into the fridge until the next day.
I also refrigerated the baked heart for a couple of days before I got
around to slicing it. Neither Doug nor I ate any meat for several
days. Neither of us had much of an appetite for anything, and the
smell of meat was more than we could handle. The kidneys floated
in their bowl of acidulated water in the fridge for more than one
overnight. Finally, Doug said that seeing them every time he
opened the fridge was putting him off his feed. I told him to go
dump them with the other offal. I hope the magpies like the
jalapeno flavor.
Eventually, we got our appetites back. The moose heart soup and a
later pot of stew made from the trimmings of the loins were both eaten
and enjoyed by the whole family. Koji and the cats seemed to
enjoy the liver trimmings, and I’ve a bag of sliced liver and one of
tenderloin steaks in the freezer for later.
Next time, I think I’ll write about the emotional trauma, the PTSD that
Doug and Koji and I all exhibited and to some extent are still
experiencing.
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