moose on the loose

So today a moose hit my car. That's right, a moose. Hit my car. It was a run and hit, not a hit and run. To his credit, it wasn't really his own fault. This is what happened, as it has been related to me:

A young moose, a calf, wandered out of the mountains this morning and into the city of Provo. The poor little guy was lost and probably just trying to find his mom. He wandered over to Provo High, up to BYU campus and over to the MTC, all without getting hit by a car (which, let's be honest, is pretty impressive and leads me to believe that he is a little more street savvy than perhaps I've given him credit for). The police had been called and were monitoring it up to this point, just waiting for the wildlife guys to show up. Eventually they do, while the moose is still at the MTC, and they shoot it with a tranquilizer gun. Supposedly when they do this normally the moose walks about 50 feet, turns to look at the guys that shot him, then lies down. However, this little guy, not knowing that this is moose protocol, instead takes off, runs down 9th East through the police barricade, takes a right down University Parkway, turns left into the Marriott Center parking lot, runs past four rows of parked cars, and this is when the tranquilizer finally kicks in and he collapses between my car (the silver Yaris) and Chris Hair's (the white Saturn). But mostly on my car. He cracked my windshield and the side of Chris's car. Then he was hauled away unceremoniously in the back of a truck. There is still moose snot smeared across my windshield and down the front of the driver's side. Delicious.

Luckily, I talked with the people at Wildlife Resources today and they apologized profusely, assuring me that this has never happened before ("At least not in the 22 years I've worked here!") and that they will pay for all the damages. And I was able to get an appointment to get my new windshield tomorrow. They won't have the paperwork done until Monday but Dale (my Wildlife Resources contact) said that it shouldn't be a problem for me to just submit the bill to them after the fact. He also said not to quote him on that, but that he would fight tooth and nail to make sure they take responsibility for the expenses. Contradictory? Perhaps. But I feel safe in my assumption that it will all work out.

I just laughed all day thinking about the ridiculousness of what happened. Really? A moose? Hit my parked car? In Provo? This is one for the history books, folks.