Moose have been edging closer to my neighborhood for over a decade now. Last fall, I saw a moose in the outskirts of Nederland.
In the last few weeks I talked to a number of people that saw a moose and her yearling in the neighborhood. While taking my cat Chloe for a walk, I saw a moose droppings 200 yards from the house.
But this afternoon, while walking on the trail on Winiger Ridge, I came face to face with momma moose and her yearling. She was by a grove of aspen, only a hundred feet away.
Right after I stopped to watch, a jogger and her 2 dogs came up the trail too. It was a tense stand off between the moose and us for about a minute. Then, momma moose decided to back off and head deeper into the north sloping woods.
That's a good thing, because moose are even a bit bigger and more imposing than elk. The same moose went chasing after a friend who was on a mountain bike, on the same trail. Don't mess with a momma moose.