by Thaddeus Flint
Mike Clement of East Nassau was on his way to work early Saturday morning when something big came crashing through his windshield.
“The car just stopped!” said Clement, a breakfast chef at the chic yoga retreat, Kripalu, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. One second he was doing 55 mph on Route 20 just east of Lebanon Valley Speedway and the next second Clement’s car, a 1999 Volkswagen Jetta, was dead on the highway. There was now a large hole where the windscreen had been and for some reason the steering wheel was bent.
[private]Clement, noticing his head was bleeding, used his cell phone to call 911. He then went and sat on a guard rail to await rescue personnel. Up the road a bit was a dead deer. Could it have been that? Clement decided it was too small to have stopped the car so suddenly. It had to have been bigger, either that or “or a squirrel with a rocket launcher,” laughed Clement later.
A New York State Trooper arrived within ten minutes. The The Lebanon Valley Protective Association also got out of bed and made their way to the scene. The Trooper, after inspecting the car – there was fur embedded in the broken glass – concluded that Clement had hit a bear. The LVPA, after inspecting Clement, concluded he was not going to be making pancakes for the yoga retreaters. They packed him up and brought him to Albany Medical Center.
While Clement’s head was being examined, Troopers made a more thorough search of the accident scene. Who knows? It was near enough to the race track that it was worth checking to see if maybe a race fan had stopped a Jetta in its tracks. Some race fans are pretty hefty, some rather furry. Better to be safe.
A few yards past the highway’s shoulder a sad discovery was made. A moose, and not a dead moose, but a moose with severe injuries. The Trooper decided the moseying days of the moose were over and kindly dispatched the animal.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation estimates that there are only around 400 to 500 moose living in New York State. Around 20 to 30 are thought to live in the area, with most residing on the Rensselaer Plateau. There is now one less. One less Jetta, too.
“Vehicle collisions are a significant mortality factor for moose,” says the DEC. An average of five moose are killed by cars in NY each year. Sometimes a driver dies as well. “About one to two percent of moose/car collisions result in a human fatality,” the agency notes. The problem with hitting a moose is that its long legs let the body of the animal land on the roof of the car. Moose can weigh up to 1,200 pounds. The one that sent Clement to the hospital was estimated to weigh 800 pounds.
With barbecue season in full swing, there seemed no reason to waste so much good fresh moose meat. As of 1999 Troopers can let those who crash into a moose keep the carcass. With Clement in the Hospital, the Trooper instead let the LVPA take care of it. “Some of them must have been hunters,” said Clement. They quickly processed the moose into various steaks and chops. Another LVPA member then borrowed some excavating equipment and neatly dug a hole and buried the remains.
Clement says the moose has been divided fairly amongst all the responders. Some of it was then donated to a party for graduating New Lebanon High School seniors. Clement also got a small portion. “I think I will be making sausages,” said the chef.who is recovering well from his minor injures.