The One Benefit of Moose Visits

All right, gentle readers, watch me try to take the high road on this post. Can I do it without giving in to the temptation of poop humor? Let’s see . . . .

While I have complained a lot lately about moose in our compound over the last month and more (see A Month of Moose) there is a benefit of their activity: fertilizer.

Specifically, like most ruminants, moose let fly whenever and where ever. That means that our property and the surrounding trails are liberally sprinkled with moose nuggets.

A gift for the gardens from Mama Moose (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).

While some enterprising Alaskans make souvenirs from this byproduct, most embarrassingly, moose nugget jewelry, like earrings and necklaces (please search the terms, so that I don’t have to further shame my fellow Alaskans!) we look at it as fertilizer. Like cow pats and other dung from herbivores, it’s pretty great stuff if collected and used on the garden.

So, occasionally, particularly after a good thaw, I wander around with a shovel and bucket, scraping up moose poop.

Right now, we’re just throwing it on the compost pile, but we’ve talked about the possibility of gloving up and shaping it into little seedling cups that we can transplant right into the garden when the time comes. On these cold, windy, wet days, that seems even less exciting than it might normally be, so we’re deferring that project till later in the year. No doubt, there will still be plenty of raw materials at hand if and when that day comes.

About 15 minutes of hunting and gathering. It’s not much, but better than leaving it spread around to track into the house, right? (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).

Incidentally, we’ve now had a whole day without contact with any moose. We chased the cow away the other morning, and, touch wood, haven’t seen her since. The calf must have been run off by its mother, and appears to no longer be in the area.

So, there it is, a whole post on moose poop, without any puns or jokes. Now, I’ll scroll up to the top and try to title the piece. Wish me luck . . . .