When I found out my Parents were going to a Kenny Rogers concert I was so happy for them I was absolutely beside myself. But when I found out that they had to drive to St. John’s in the night to get there I was terrified, I was terrified they would hit a moose. I was inconsolable I tell you, I had no idea of what a moose was capable of but I had heard stories in my few years that made me very weary of them and sacred for the safety of anyone who had to travel at night.
I begged my parents not to go in the days leading up to the concert. Only now as a grown man do I realize the guilt trip I must have laid on my Parents. They told me it would be OK but never did they once put my mind to ease.
On the day that they left, I was brought to my Grandmother’s where I would stay the night, only I refused to get out of the car - thinking that if I stayed in the car they wouldn’t leave and if they did I would at least die with my family in a car accident caused by a moose.
My uncle had a girlfriend at the time named Judy - who is now his wife, and it was her who came out to the car to talk to me. She explained how it is very unlikely for an accident to occur and that my dad was going to be driving very carefully because of that very reason. What else she said I’m not sure but she eased my mind, and I stopped worrying about their drive in town. It was as though I had been given a drug and as it rushed my bloodstream it dissolved all anxiety and fear of my Parent’s dying that night. One could say I was comfortable with the idea of them driving in. But before that woman came out to the car to speak to me I thought I would never see my parents alive again. It was some years later that she had a daughter of her own and her daughter ended up in a car accident involving a moose. Despite having to be in a back brace and receiving cuts and bruises she came out of it pretty lucky.
On a lighter note in the days after the accident when I visited my Cousin she told me that when the emergency responders cut her out of the car she was covered in moose shit - she even had moose shit in her hair.
