I'm a mountain biking newbie, but I love it. It's an absolute blast. While some of my friends seem to enjoy climbing hills--the fitness freak's version of insanity?--I much prefer careering down the hills, never really sure what's around the next bend, just hoping fervently that I don't run into a moose or a bear or even another human. At the speeds you reach, any of the above would be really bad. Imagine colliding with a surprised grizzly at twenty mph on a bike.
Anyhow, yesterday I rode both off the paved trails in the woods and also on some of our wonderfully maintained paved trails here in Anchorage, one of which is called the Tony Knowles (after a former governor) Coastal Trail. Coming up a hill on the trail, I came upon the scene you see in the picture. That's a mother moose and one of two calves she had in tow at the time.
Although it appears in the image that the onlookers in the background are pretty close, I think they were actually a bit farther back than that. I think maybe when I cropped the picture it ended up making them look closer than they really were. Still, they were probably too close. Typically we end up with tourists who get too close to the wildlife and this may be the case here.
Moose are, in fact, quite dangerous--especially mothers with their babies nearby. Bull moose during the rutting season (fall) can also be pretty cantankerous and can do really surprising things in a testosterone-filled burst of energy. For the most part, they will charge you to get you to move out of the way. If you do, you're generally okay, but occasionally they feel the need to stomp the living you know what out of you and that can actually be a terminal experience.
I have a bell on my bike that's very useful for letting pedestrians and other bikers know that I'm coming. I use it freely in the woods to let the wildlife and the humans know I'm coming. Interestingly, the moose are completely nonplussed by the bell. However, when I come skidding to a stop on my bike, like when I come zooming around a corner and the moose is RIGHT THERE (!), that seems to get their attention. But really, I do think it's the sound of the skidding as much as anything else. I have been in situations where I could observe the moose from a safe distance and have rung the bell repeatedly and/or sporadically like some kind of village idiot, but the moose just don't react. I've also skidded the bike from a safe distance and they always at least look up; more often they actually move.
Similarly, when we go hiking in the woods, most of us carry bear bells to let the bears know we're coming (some call them dinner bells), but I've heard that the bells really have little effect on the bears. But hitting a couple of sticks together (perhaps like the unusual sound of a skidding bike) does get their attention.
My bike once looked like this...
