Goin' South

Academics, researchers, field people, naturalists, herdsmen, falconers, pet keepers, everyone who has had much intimate experience with other creatures knows beyond doubt that individual members of species have what we call, in ourselves, distinct personalities. They must, because the activity of a single creature reflects a combination of inherited behavioral responses and learning—that is, knowledge acquired through individual experience. No two have precisely the same experience (or, presumably, the same inherited capacity for acquiring experience and acting on it), and therefore, each personality is in some respects unique, whether it be in men or moose. However, to prepare even a sketchy biography of a single moose, to investigate the myriad formative influerices, would be far more difficult and time-consuming than chronicling the life of a defrocked politician. Also, it would be practically impossible, communication alone being (for now, anyway) an almost insurmountable barrier between man and moose. Finally, there is little professional incentive to make such differentiation. In practice, therefore, we generally treat each species other than Homo sapiens collectively, noting common characteristics and proceeding as if the behavior and potential of each individual is identical. We know this is not the case, but do not know how to work the personality factor into our studies, all of which are distorted by this omission. The distortion is implicit in our judgments and predictions and generalization about other species, which are upset when an individual like the Missouri Kid comes along.

Inexplicably driven, the Kid came loping down the Des Moines River in the fall of 1977. By late October he had reached the vicinity of Boone, about 150 miles from that year's starting point in Emmetsburg. Gladfelter is based in Boone at a wildlife research station, and he went out from it to meet the moose. "He was moving right along," Gladfelter reports, "but seemed in good condition and gave no apparent signs of panic or being disoriented. There was a question of what he'd do next, since we are on the edge of the Des Moines metropolitan area."

What the Kid did during the last few days of October was pass through the Des Moines area, an urban center of some 200,000. That, at least, is the only reasonable assumption, because less than a week after he was seen north of Des Moines in Boone by Gladfelter, he was spotted 20 miles or so south of the city, still along the river. Somehow he slipped past the metropolis undetected, a thought-provoking feat for a 1,000-pound animal carrying a four-foot rack of antlers.

"The most amazing thing," says Gladfelter, "is that he must've crossed a couple of interstates and a lot of other roads with heavy traffic." It is possible that some people did see him but didn't believe, or want to report, the evidence of their own senses—a bull moose jogging along I-80.

The Kid made his last appearance in Iowa on the 16th of November, well down the river beyond Ottumwa, more than 75 miles southeast of Des Moines. By mid-December he had traveled another 30 or 40 miles and was below the Iowa line in Clark County, Mo., in the northeast corner of the state. There, another deer biologist, Wayne Porath of the Missouri Department of Conservation, took over as his Boswell.

"I'd heard about the Iowa sightings," says Porath, "so it didn't come as a complete shock when he turned up here. But it certainly was a curiosity. We had an elk wander down from Wyoming along the Missouri River a few years ago. Occasionally roadrunners or armadillo show up in the southwestern part of the state, and we get rumors of mountain lions, but there's never been anything comparable to the moose. So far as I can find in the literature, there's never been a wild moose in Missouri before—at least not since the Ice Age."

However, during the first seven or eight months of 1978 the Kid was seldom spotted in northeastern Missouri, and there was some speculation that he may have made only a cameo, for-the-record appearance. In retrospect it seems likely that he had again found a secluded wooded area (one less accessible to sightseers than had been the case in northern Iowa) and remained close to it through the spring and summer. Whatever his arrangements, he was in fine fettle and full antler by fall, and for the second autumn in a row set off on a grand tour.

Traversing the drainage systems of the Fabius and Salt rivers and Perche Creek, he leisurely circled through north-central Missouri, first heading southwest, then north and finally east, back toward the Mississippi. On this jaunt he was frequently observed, and at one point late in October he was spotted near Harrisburg, 15 miles from Columbia and only about 20 miles north of the Missouri River. It was his most southerly penetration, and by then the Kid had broken all known records for long-distance moose. In Harrisburg he was 100 miles south of the Iowa line and more than 600 miles south of the nearest conventional range for his species on the Minnesota-Canadian border. That's as the crow flies. He had probably wandered twice that distance as the moose walks.

By the first of November he had traveled 20 miles north of Harrisburg and was reported in soybean, winter-wheat and oak-brush country near Moberly, which is the home of Paul Jeffries. Jeffries is a veteran conservation department field-agent who works with area farmers to restore old and create new wildlife habitat. Being intensely interested in the Missouri Kid, Jeffries called Porath, a longtime friend and bow-hunting companion, and suggested that they do a little moose looking. The two men didn't catch up with the Kid but spent most of the time following his tracks and deducing from other signs what he had been doing. Mostly he had fed on multiflora roses, which grow in the area, but he had also, fastidiously, without causing much damage, nibbled some winter-wheat shoots. This came as a surprise, because a moose, even if it had reason to suspect that wheat sprouts were tasty, would have difficulty getting at such a low-growing crop. The long, almost giraffe-like legs of a moose give it considerable advantage when it comes to wading and foraging in swamps or reaching up to strip foliage and buds from tree limbs, but the animal is not well designed for bending over and grazing like a sheep or cow. There is just too much moose for this sort of stoop labor.

"That moose figured out the winter-wheat problem without any trouble at all," Jeffries reports admiringly of the Missouri Kid. "He just got down on his prayer bones to get at it."