Many good stories that are told at Sleepy Dog Cabins are about fishing…of course!
Living up the Red Lake Highway makes you very familiar with moose stories too. Stories about meetings and close encounters.
This is one of them.
It was a dark and stormy night…… and Tom was heading home, back up Highway 105. Maybe it was 1991. And actually it was dusk, that difficult to see transition light and it was raining hard. He had a load on, a trailer full of windows and he was making poor time with it.
He was on a windy stretch of road following behind a small car that was already down in a bottom. Tom , from the top of the hill could see a very large cow moose trotting out of the bush and heading on over the road. The moose was not visible to the car. A trick of elevation and bending highway. It didn’t look good. There was not enough road to spare and she was at a good clip. Okay…… brake lights….. the large creature had been spotted. Now Tom watched with dread as the driver tried to manuever right then left to no avail.
Blam!!
The little white car nosed between long legs and the cow bounced off the hood of the car, rolled over the roof , bounced again on the trunk, landed on her feet, and kept on going across to the ditch and down the other side. It was incredible to witness.
Pulled over on the shoulder and full of adrenalin the guy jumps out and hollers
” Did you see a Moose”?
“Mr, all you did was slow it down.”
It was an unbelievable event that Tom witnessed. A very lucky thing.
He has retold this story many times when ditch donkeys are the topic of conversation.
We recently met a fellow in Florida, who learned we lived up
in Perrault Falls, Ontario and he wanted to share his
memorable close call with mother nature.
Jim was driving the newest company car up the 105. It was raining. An evening when you questioned if you should be on the road. Out of literally no where jumps a huge cow moose onto the highway. Jim thinks he can squeak by on one side. That’s what the moose decides too. Changing tactics, he shifts to starboard. Moose deviates as well. Too late! The road was running out. Only thing left to do was to minimize the damage. Jim decides to position the vehicle so the front post of the frame will help take the weight of the beast upon impact. Now there are no degrees of separation.
The nose of the small Ford glides under her long legs. Then the creature rolls off the hood onto the roof , and down off the trunk. Incredibly shaken Mr. Robinson eases over to the side, jumps out. No moose anywhere! Wrecked car! Surreal. Lucky guy! The next vehicle had already pulled over.
“Did you see a moose?”
Twenty three years later and 3096 Km away from the scene of the incident the two strangers , Tom Williams and
Jim Robinson meet again !
Also kind of incredible!!
One Response
At first I thought Tom was joking when he said that he witnessed the whole thing. As the conversation continued it was clear he’d been there as he mentioned he was more than a little annoyed with me because, due to the prevailing visibility, I had slowed to less than the posted speed limit. I wasn’t particularly thrilled either because I had been held up at work and wasn’t expecting to be in Red Lake until far later than originally anticipated. Little did I know….
After Tom and I said our goodbyes that evening I had a few items to consider. I had just wrecked the newest and best equipped car in our fleet, needed an alternate ride home to Winnipeg, explain all this to my boss, wondered how much paperwork was involved in destroying a government vehicle (a fear not unfounded as it turned out) and of course the undiluted pleasure of filing a police report.
At times like this it can be challenging to find humour, but humour there was. After my arrival in Red Lake in the wee small hours my first chore was to find the local Ontario Provincial Police detachment and file a report. When I submitted the report to the officer at the desk he informed me I was mistaken and said that I should change the report to reflect a different location. I refused of course, and as the bantering continued he let it slip that he had seven reports of moose/vehicle incidents and if I included his location in my report then the books would balance. Alas, it was not to be. To say he was less than amused when I exited the detachment would be an understatement. I still chuckle when this memory surfaces.