Bullwinkle They're Not

Moose.

My wife Wendy wanted to see them on our recently completed trip to Nova Scotia, having missed them in our previous trips to the northeast. Seeing deer here in Michigan is a big thrill for her and seeing the largest member of the deer family would make her vacation.

So I checked guidebooks and figured the best chance would be on Skyline trail in Cape Breton National Park, a five-mile round trip hike that's also billed as one of the most picturesque along the Atlantic seaboard. They said we were almost "guaranteed" to see at least one moose and maybe more mooses (meese?).

We hit the trail early, having tent-camped nearby along the coast. We were the second car at the trailhead parking lot. Ironically, in the 'it's a small world' department, the first hiker we came across on the trail said he was from Ann Arbor too.

Then we spotted our first moose, a bull moose, feeding in the woods nearby. I told Wendy they were like dinosaurs in the forest, so huge for their surroundings. Later down the trail we came across a family of moose, the bull moose sporting a monstrous rack of antlers.

He didn't appear to like my maneuvering to get a better picture (what I won't do to post a good picture on my blog for my blogging buddies). When he started shaking his head and waving his antlers I decided we should move on.

As the morning wore on, we encountered more people on the trail, lots more. There was one boisterous group of French-speaking women who hustled past us, more interested in their conversation than what lie in the woods and hills around us.

When we got to the end of the trail, at a series of overlooks over the Gulf of St. Lawrence, I didn't see the women anymore. I asked some bystander with a distinguished French accent if he'd seen a large contingent of women pass by.

"The ones that scared the moose with all their talking--pop pop pop pop pop?" He nodded dismissively towards one of the overlooks below. "Down there," he said.

Later, I saw on a sign how to interpret moose moods. Head and ears up? He's listening. Waving his antlers? He's getting agitated (I could have used this information BEFORE I started taking pictures). Head down, ears up? He's getting ready to attack. Wow. Thankfully I didn't see that.

The pictures above show a few of the moose we saw--we saw five on the trail, one on the highway. Note the big guy eyeing me warily. My sister-in-law thinks it's just a "get lost" look. Also the overlook that I spoke of as well as part of the park signage on moose.