As I was leaving to go back up north yesterday for Naomi's birthday and come back to the rectory to write my sermon, a mile down the road from the house, I got a flat. Mercifully it was smack in the middle of the Calvin Coolidge historical site so I was able to connect with a phone (cells don't work there), not that it did me any good. Thanks to a kind soul who came up to change the tire and put on the spare (donut), I was back en route after an hour.
During that time, I revealed that I was in the car that hit the moose on Thursday night. The woman who was helping said:
'Oh yes! It was the talk of the town. We all wondered who it was. We figured they drove away from the accident and we hoped that they weren't injured badly.'
Turns out she and her husband were phoned by someone just down the road from the collision spot so they went up to help with traffic and the constable then arrived and directed traffic until the state trooper arrived around 10.30 (50 minutes after the accident and 40 after we phoned because they had to come from across the state).
The moose, a large female, had evidently died on impact and was in the middle of the road or southbound lane (I don't know for sure). So they needed to prevent more people from hitting her.
It took the game warden using a winch to haul the poor thing up on his truck.
No one is blaming us for leaving the scene (no phones anywhere!!!, no house nearby) and all are glad no humans were injured or killed.
So, does being a member of the chainsaw club and moose collision club now make me a Vermonter and not a flat lander?
Under it all, I am profoundly sad and still amazed that none of us died.
[the hood of the car]
Further update: the moose was a female yearling so the other one must have the mother. Compa went and picked up the pieces of her car from the side of the road.
4 comments:
Oh my heart to you dear Caminante, my heart to you and Compa.
So ... you're notorious now, eh? ;-)
But as to this:
So, does being a member of the chainsaw club and moose collision club now make me a Vermonter and not a flat lander?
... I suspect you know the answer.
You sure are having bad car-ma this week. Thank God for your safety.
"I suspect you know the answer. " Which is, nevuh. Not until you're six feet under and even at that, you'll never be a Vermontuh.
You're right about the bad car-ma -- it comes in threes. Evidently so does bad news for the town: someone was killed in a logging accident on Wednesday, we hit the moose on Thursday and someone went off the road by the school on Friday.
Yeah, I spend enough time in Andover, Mass. to have a sense of that.
Let us hope that the bad luck of threes is now over.
Isn't is delightful and humbling to be in a small town where you really do feel these losses?
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