R.I.P. Roxii the Moose

I have seen a grand total of five moose in the wild. The closest I ever came to one was when I was in my tent on a fire assignment. I got up one morning and crawled out to see what I could scavenge out of my pack for breakfast. Suddenly, there was something huge about three feet from my head. It was a moose calf tromping through camp, looking for his own breakfast. He must have been old enough to be out on his own, and I was grateful Mom wasn’t anywhere around. Moose have a reputation for being grumpy and nearsighted. Since I didn’t have health insurance, I was in no position to be gutted by an antler or stomped into the ground at Wasatch Mountain State Park. That’s no way to start your day. 

After the moose left, we went to the work site to cut down trees infested with bark beetles. And I have often told the story of the annoyed Park City resident who thought I was despoiling “his forest” by trying to save the trees that had not yet fallen victim to the beetles. I was reminded of that when I read a story on Fox 13 Utah about Roxii the Moose.

Roxii was put down this weekend. She was a favorite of the Park City residents because she could often be seen wandering the streets of the Pinebrook, Summit Park, and Jeremy Ranch areas. And let’s be honest, it would be cool to look out the window of your house and see a moose, even if it was eating your rose bush. But Roxii was observed having “a serious and painful-looking limp, barely able to walk or move.” So it was the unhappy duty of a Summit County Sheriff’s deputy to put her down. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) authorized the action since Roxii had a broken hind leg. The DWR stated:

It is not feasible to rehabilitate big game animals in Utah, due to disease concerns, low survival rates of wildlife that are acclimated to people, and a lack of resources. So when an animal is injured and becomes immobile, there aren’t other options besides humanely euthanizing the animal.

The DWR also said it tried to relocate Roxii to a more remote location for her safety, but a resident prevented that from happening. The agency added, “As a result, the moose was left within the city limits, rather than being relocated to a safer mountain location. It is important for the public to not interfere with DWR efforts to relocate animals, to not feed wildlife, and to not draw them to residential areas or roadways, due to safety concerns to people and the animal.”

It may have been a point of neighborhood pride to have a moose around. But moose belong with other moose, doing moose things out in moose country. A street is not a moose’s natural habitat. Roxii, it seems, was a sort of communal pet or mascot. And it was apparently more important to at least one resident that she remained to give well-heeled people their “mountain experience” rather than letting her live out her life.

It goes back to the man who was upset that I was cutting down “his forest.” He liked having trees nearby. Well, first of all, it wasn’t “his forest.” It was the taxpayer’s forest. Second, if it hadn’t been for us and our nasty, dirty chainsaws, he would have been forced to learn to like dead trees nearby. That would have likely been followed by a wildfire, also nearby. It goes back to the people who build houses on cliffs and are amazed when they collapse. It goes back to all the transplants occupying the new subdivisions near wildland areas, who are flabbergasted when mountain lions, coyotes, and hawks eat their dogs and cats. Nature is gonna nature.

To a certain degree, many people are guilty of this conceit. I’ve seen person after person venture into the mountains and the deserts wearing the wrong shoes or clothes and not carrying nearly enough water for this latitude. I’ve seen meadows and trails torn to shreds and covered in litter and graffiti by oafs on ATVs or on foot who just didn’t care. Then there were the idiots who went out target shooting and didn’t care where the bullets landed and sparked a range fire that almost burned down my neighborhood a few years ago.

But the wealthy progressives look down their noses at these people and decry their very existence. At the same time, the same wealthy progressives will gladly tear up a mountainside or a section of woods for their new multi-million dollar mansion or ski slope, tell fire crews not to thin diseased trees from “their forest,” or keep wildlife officers from moving a moose to a safer place to keep the atmosphere of their neighborhood rustic. They are people like Bill Gates, who lives and travels in total luxury claiming that he is saving the planet through his latest initiative or geo-engineering brainstorm. They will do anything they can to preserve their reality, no matter the impact it has on yours.