Pete the Moose redux

Vermont's governor-elect, Peter Shumlin, has made it clear he intends to right a wrong--the issues described in the longwinded tantrum I engaged in last July are about to be addressed and reversed. This makes me glad I voted for Shumlin, although I admit I did it holding my nose--I wanted Doug Racine, who tied Shumlin in the primary but lost on a recount.

The Burlington Free Press reports, "Key lawmakers and Governor-elect Peter Shumlin are ready to reverse a 2010 law drafted in secret and passed at the 11th hour that gave an Northeast Kingdom farmer ownership of wild deer and moose on his property, an action that provoked an outcry among hunters.


"A bill already in draft form restates the longstanding principle that wild animals belong to all people of Vermont. It requires the wild deer and moose trapped inside Doug Nelson’s elk hunting park to be removed, probably through hunting. It also allows for protection of young Pete the Moose, an orphaned resident of the park."


I object to this "orphaned" designation--it's false--but at least the smarmy, disagreeable behavior of Susan Bartlett has been dragged out into the open. Bartlett engineered a cheesy, behind-the-scenes deal to allow a single wealthy constituent, Doug Nelson, to claim de facto ownership of the native wildlife that were accidentally or deliberately enclosed in his fence--a fence put up so that unfair-chase hunting could bring him a bit more dough. It was junk politics at its very worst, and not how we normally do business in this state.


The real back story on this moose is that some dogs, unrestrained by leashes, injured a moose calf; the owners of these dogs then decided they would rescue the calf by appropriating him and taking him to an unlicensed rehabilitator, who then turned the animal over to Nelson. The moose wasn't orphaned--to be accurate, the cow was scared off by dogs and people, and the dogs did what dogs do when not properly restrained, and  then the people did what people sometimes do when they fail to grasp the difference between a wild animal and a domesticated one. 


I personally don't care one way or the other about "saving" Pete--he's toast no matter what. He has been petted like a dog and fed all manner of junk food, and he's been deprived the the environment he was designed to live in (or die in, as the case may be). He's gone a long way past the point of redemption. But the key doctrine--that wild animals are held in public trust and cannot be domesticated or owned by any individual--has been confirmed and reinstated.


Temper tantrum over.

Politics and Pete the Moose

See the nice lady pat the moose? Tell me: What's wrong with this picture?

About two weeks ago the Vermont legislature played along with a last-minute, back-room deal that allows a private individual to fence native moose and deer in a game preserve in our Northeast Kingdom—this despite a longstanding doctrine that wild animals are held in communal public trust and can’t be converted to private property. This game preserve is run by Doug Nelson of Irasburg, and Nelson charges a hefty fee (from $2,000 to $7,500, according to local media) to people who want to hunt inside the fence; this violates another longstanding hunters' principle called “fair chase.” Nelson has been in conflict and negotiations over this preserve since it was established in the 1990s; he stocks it with imported elk.

This story heated up when hikers, out with their unleashed dogs, came across a month-old moose calf; apparently these dogs injured the calf, and the adult promptly vanished into the woods with an uninjured twin. These misguided animal lovers appropriated the injured calf and gave him to David Lawrence, a wildlife rehabilitator who has a history of coloring outside the lines when it comes to wildlife policy, which clearly states that wild animals are wild and belong only to themselves. They cannot be taken in, domesticated, or converted to pets or private property.

And where did the young moose eventually end up? On Doug Nelson’s elk farm, along with the other native species that he illegally trapped inside when he put up the unethical (and illegal) fence.

Just when you’d think an unattractive story couldn’t get much uglier, this tame moose, who has since learned to eat doughnuts and Snickers bars, became a media darling, and when Fish and Wildlife officials made it clear that there were policy and biosecurity issues with the interspecies contact and the continuing violation of public doctrine, Pete got a Facebook page and a silly and sentimental following of people who couldn't tell the difference between a wild creature and a domesticated one.

“Saving” Pete has now became a politicized rallying cry, mostly coming from the throats of people who fail to see that he was doomed from the get-go—first by dogs, then by his removal from the environment he was designed to live or die in, and then by being hand-fed junk food that isn't good for people, much less a creature designed to live on browse. And, as you can see from the photo, he has also lost any adaptive, necessary fear of humans.

As the chair of Fish and Wildlife put it, “This is just wrong in so many ways.”

Beyond the story of Pete qua Pete, a lot of so-called animals lovers can't seem to grasp a second issue, which is that there are real risks to putting cervids—deer, elk, and mule deer—into enclosures, since this concentrates the risk of a certain transmissible spongiform encephalopathy called chronic wasting disease, or CWD. These diseases take a lot of different forms—scrapie in sheep, mad cow disease in cattle, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob in humans.

CWD was first identified in 1967 as a disease in captive mule deer at the Colorado Division of Wildlife Foothills Wildlife Research Facility in Fort Collins, Colorado, and it has since spread, mostly through exports of captive elk, as far east as New York and north into Canada. There is no treatment, and the disease reaches critical levels quickly when populations of cervids are concentrated and enclosed—from 50 to 90 percent in research and unfair-chase game reserves in places like Nebraska and Colorado.

To my considerable delight, one of the behind-closed-doors legislators mentioned earlier, Susan Bartlett, has opted to run for governor, and this has given your correspondent the opportunity, for the first time in many years, to write grumpy letters to the editors of the statewide newspapers and also write large checks (for me) to the Fish and Wildlife Trust Fund. I’m also watchdogging a possible constitutional challenge to this action, and will probably separate myself from a bit more money to help pay for that as well.

This is all about politics, Pete is toast, and I’m very clear in my own mind about who’s to blame.

hearts in the frozen north, again

We get a fair bit of snow, and we by-gum know what to do with it. The goal, it seems, it keep us cheerful until Town Meeting Day.

Valentine Phantom in Montpelier

This annual tradition of plastering hearts all over the capitol makes me love the city a little more each February 14. Nobody knows who's responsible --it's a secret guerrilla operation and we hope it stays that way.

It's a lovely mystery, on a par with the presents left for Edgar Allen Poe, although we hear he didn't get his roses or his cognac this year. We got our red hearts, though, and the crosswalks of Montpelier are filled with people wearing smiles.

are police logs literature?

Every Thursday the local daily publishes the police report for Montpelier, and I'm getting in the habit of keeping them around as a sort of accidental local poetry. I can't figure out whether the log reflects the mind of a small-city beat cop or whether it reflects the broader psyche of the whole city (which is not really a city, with only 8,000 people). Either way, the reports are well worth the time it takes to read them.

Suspicious activity: Caller received an automated phone call about his credit card.

Car hit a deer on Sherwood Drive; deer still alive.

Someone was choking on Barre Street, but recovered.

Caller heard someone walking up the back stairs on River Street.

Horses in the roadway on Main Street.

Man possibly pounding windows on State Street.

Found: red-colored miniature Pinscher on River Street.

Water running from light fixtures on Cityside Drive.

Woman concerned about a child in front of City Hall.

Dog on Loomis Street barking off and on for about three hours.

Candle burning in an apartment on Cummings Street.

Horses in the roadway on State Street. Same horses.

Female sitting on a curb on State Street rocking back and forth.

Neighbor on Jay street calling someone names; an ongoing problem.

I read these and wonder what kind of literature they are. Maybe literature of a very low order, but so what? I confess that I'm worried about the deer and amused about the horses--these were the draft horses used to pull the Christmas wagon we all got to ride around town in during December. They were definitely in the roadway, but they were supposed to be there. Who called this in? The barking dog is deeply familiar to me, since it was barking barking barking next door, but I never once thought it was something I should refer to the police. Who did?

Animal incidents aside, there really is something rhetorically interesting about someone "possibly" pounding on storefront windows downtown, and something downright creepy about water pouring from streetlights on Cityside Drive. I want to know who got choked on Barre Street and is now feeling better, and I'd also like to know who, exactly, is in front of City Hall--woman or child? Is this deliberate ambiguity? I'm a little worried about that woman sitting on the curb.

I sometimes think a decent novel could be constructed entirely out of police reports--it might be a little spare and sketchy, but it would have a kind of puzzling charm.