THE KISS

Meeting the moose named Marianne

By Lloyd Walton

Lloyd Walton is a multi-award-winning Canadian director and cinematographer. A Moose Named Marianne is abridged from his historiography, Chasing the Muse: Canada. The book is available on Amazon, Kindle, Chapters, Indigo and Barnes and Noble.

Many years ago when I was shooting and directing a lighthearted film called In search of the Perfect Campsite, the script called for the newlywed hero to take his bride on a camping honeymoon. One scene required the couple to be interrupted in a tender moment in their canoe by a nearby moose standing in the water watching them. It became a challenge to get a wild animal to walk in on cue for that scene. I spent my evenings stalking locations where a moose might walk into the dramatic moment.

We eventually accomplished the scene and I got to meet one moose up close. He walked out of the water, came right up to me and looked me in the eye. There seemed to be a connectedness of spirit, a meeting of minds. I later drew a clumsy sketch of him asking me to someday put him in a movie.

THE MOOSE SKETCH

That sketch kept turning up in my sketchbook as a reminder of that request, then it happened. The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources Wildlife Branch had instituted a new practice for hunting moose in the province – hunters were given tags for hunting only bulls, or calves, or cows in a lottery system. It was an idea proven elsewhere to increase the size of the herds.

But how was a novice hunter to know the differences? I was enlisted to make a movie to show how to distinguish between bull, calf, and cow moose. As a bonus to this new policy, Ontario’s herd was expected to grow by 20,000 animals. It seemed like an onerous job, but I said I’d do it.

I went to my Ojibway teacher/mentor, Fred Wheatley, and asked for advice about working close to moose. At the time, I was working with Aboriginal elders making a film about ancient pictographs and petroglyphs. I was learning another approach to nature outside the lexicon of wildlife scientists. Fred told me my voice would tell them that I meant no harm and my eyes would tell them the same.

TALK TO THEM

He said, “Talk to them. Tell them what you are doing. Your voice indicates that you mean them no harm. They look you straight in the eye… those animals look you straight in the eye and if your voice may not be lying, but then your eyes can be lying—so there are two ways that they can evaluate you.”

Immediately I heard a loud “snort,” behind me, directly over my shoulder. A big black bull moose was standing hip-deep in the water and breathing down my neck.

A large wildlife research compound near Thunder Bay was my destination for the first day of the shoot. Hiking down an overgrown old bush road, I came across a cow moose sitting in the grass, dappled in the warm light of a sunny June afternoon. I put down the gear I was carrying, smiled, and said, “Hello, I’m Lloyd. I’m making a movie. You look so beautiful sitting there. I will just set up this low tripod called Baby Legs, mount the camera, and begin.” When I told her how beautiful she looked, she batted her long brown eyelashes at me. I was on my knees panning left, then right, and zooming in and out until I felt that I had her covered. I opened my arms and said, “Thank you, sweetheart. I’m going to make you a star.”

She awkwardly got up on her feet. I turned the camera back on. She walked slowly towards me, bent down, kissed the lens, then turned her head, and slowly walked away. I think she went ahead to pass the word on to a few others,

“This guy is OK. He has some contraption that won’t hurt you.”

I set up by the pond where a bull moose was swimming. I kept the camera rolling as the huge creature slowly got out of the water and circled me to check me out.

THE ROCKING BEFORE THE CHARGE

Moose are not always docile creatures. In the autumn, the males get supercharged and dopey with testosterone. So, all they want to do is round up as many females as they can for their own private harem and kill or maim any male who might threaten his private orgy. That season, I was rescued by an alert farmer who watched a big bull moose doing the rocking-the-head before the charge. Through my camera eyepiece, it looked terrific. Knowing moose behaviour, which was new to me, the farmer drove his tractor directly at the charging moose, stopping it in its stride. Thankfully.

I returned before Christmas to the Thunder Bay wildlife compound where a female moose not only allowed me to film her but also sketch her. Perhaps it was the same demure female who snuck me a kiss on my first day. When I canoed into the interior of Algonquin Park, it was as if, through some secret language, the moose had spread the word that it was Lloyd’s last shooting day for his film.

“Hey gang, it’s your last chance to star.”

SECRET INDIAN MOOSE CALL

Moose upon moose were literally pouring out of the woods. I paddled out of the sunrise with the movie camera mounted near the prow and a start-stop switch wired to my paddle hand. As one bull put his head underwater to eat the aquatic vegetation, I would paddle closer with the sun at my back. When he lifted his head, I froze motionless while the camera observed him chewing his sopping, dripping breakfast. To him, I could have been a floating log. Mom-moose played with their kids and I filmed one female that looked like she was dangling a cigarette out of her mouth.

By 10 o’clock I figured I had all of the footage I needed to complete the film and opened my pack to have a snack. I recalled a story that my friend, Archie Cheechoo (while acting as a Cree hunting guide), told me about a very noisy hunting party that stayed up late shouting and laughing and consequently

scared the game away. They approached him to ask if he had any “secret Indian moose call” that would call in the animal? Archie looked to the sky then asked them to gather around him. He bent over, pinched his nose, threw his head back and screamed, “HERE MOOSIE, MOOSIE, MOOSIE!”

Snack time over and feeling very self-congratulatory I figured, “What the hell?” I pinched my nose and let fly, “HERE MOOSIE, MOOSIE, MOOSIE!”

Immediately I heard a loud “snort,” behind me, directly over my shoulder. A big black bull moose was standing hip-deep in the water and breathing down my neck. A gentle puff of wind blew my canoe in a sideways motion, creating a tracking shot with the bow of the canoe, the purring camera, and Bullwinkle moving in unison.

Spread out over a year, it was only nine days of filming, but the movie illustrated the yearly life cycle of moose, and the body changes the bulls, calves, and cows go through in each season. The tender kissing scene from my first-day shooting did not appear in the movie we titled, Of Moose and Man. It was used in the film The Teaching Rocks, with the Ojibway elder’s voice saying, “Talk to them, your voice means that you mean them no harm.”

A friend, a moose biologist from Thunder Bay, was getting married and I decided as a wedding gift to do a painting of the moose I sketched in the snow. When he opened the package he said, “Oh, it’s Marianne.”

That had to be Marianne whom I first met on that June afternoon. She obviously had her way with men. It had to be Marianne who batted her big brown eyelashes at me, bent over to give a gentle kiss, then sauntered off into the bushes.