During the rutting season from mid-September until mid-October, bull moose occasionally get their wires crossed and seek out dairy cows. (Photo courtey Paul Cyr)

In late September 1960, a weeklong visit of a bull moose on my grandparents’ dairy farm generated big news in the Somerset County town of Mercer. Motorists stopped or slowly drove past our farm’s pastures to catch a glimpse of the moose, which had a crush on Ginger — our top milking cow. A month earlier, she had garnered a blue ribbon at the Skowhegan State Fair, where judges deemed her the competition’s “best proportioned” Jersey cow with “a robust udder and teats.”

On Day 1 of the fair, my twin brother, Don, and I, then age 8, scrubbed Ginger with Ivory soap and rinsed her with buckets of rainwater collected in an oak barrel on the farmhouse porch.

On the third morning of the moose’s visit, Don and I asked Grampa to explain the bull’s attraction to our prize cow. Spitting out a plug of Beech-Nut chewing tobacco, he stammered, “Um, well, lemme think … hell, I dunno. Ask your grandmother.”

Inside the kitchen, we ambushed Grammy with questions about moose sex. A stern, stoic Yankee, she turned beet red when asked why the bull was so visibly excited when he eyed Ginger in the fenced pasture.

“Oh, lordy me, young’uns, ask your mother,” she said, before dashing into the front parlor. We expected Mom to answer our questions because referring us to Dad would have constituted reckless negligence.

Author’s grandparents’ farm in Mercer. After Florian Yeaton’s death in 1972, a new barn was built. In 1960, a bull moose with Lucille’s bra ran between the barn and the elm tree. (Joseph family photo)

“Well,” Mother began with a deep breath, “September is moose rutting season. That’s when bull moose breed with female moose, which are also called cows.” The notion of a moose seeking intimate companionship with Ginger was confusing enough. The interchangeable use of bulls and cows to describe bovines and moose caused our heads to spin. “For some reason,” she continued, “the moose wants Ginger to be his mating partner.” Don immediately grasped the meaning of her carefully constructed answer. “Do you mean,” he asked as the words flew, “it’s like the time Mr. Redlevske’s bull jumped the fence and mounted one of Grandpa’s cows?”

Mom nodded affirmatively.

From the parlor, Grammy repeated, “Oh, lordy me.” Our precocious 4-year-old sister, Gale, eavesdropping on the enlightening conversation, yelled “Yuck!” and sought refuge with our grandmother.

Several mornings later, tension was palpable in the barn. Ginger hankered to graze in the pasture, and the bull moose hankered to cozy up to her. She stomped her hooves and bellowed, as if to shout, “Listen up, I’ll be eating dry, old hay all winter. I want green grass, and I want it now!” Grampa, though, kept her and the other cows in the barn because the moose appeared agitated.

Each time the bug-eyed bull drooled and licked the air with his long tongue, evidence mounted that lovesickness had infected his brain. Mr. Bryant, our local game warden, was summoned to the farm. “Rutting bull moose,” he said, “sniff and lick the air to collect pheromones of cows in heat.” In a flash, my moose sex education had taken a quantum leap.

At the supper table that evening, my baby sister — chewing on the warden’s keen insights — asked if “fairy-moans” were equivalent to mom’s perfume. Grammy dodged the question by discussing the upcoming Grange Hall supper, and if she should bake one apple pie or two. Gale, though, wasn’t duped by the subject switcheroo. “So, Grammy,” she continued, “are you wearing ‘fairy-moans’ to the Grange supper?” My brother and I weren’t interested in apple pies or the baked bean supper either. Current events were foremost in our thoughts. We proposed presenting our knowledge of deviant moose sexual behavior in a show-and-tell at school. But the idea was categorically nixed by Grammy and Mother.

The following morning, Grandpa had had enough of the utterly bewildered moose. He sicced Bonnie, our border collie, on the big brute, instructing her to drive him back into the woods. But Bonnie had other ideas. Being a herding dog, she instead circled behind the bull and chased him into the barnyard.

Grampa Yeaton holding my sister, Gale, in 1956. (Joseph family photo)

That’s when “all hell broke loose,” Grammy later told Bea, our Ma Bell operator, on the telephone.

With the moose thundering toward us, Grammy froze on the gravel driveway with a basket of eggs she’d collected in the henhouse. Don and I hid behind our grandparents and mother. Spooked by a wall of people, the moose veered between the barn and the farmhouse. Bypassing the clothesline, his left antler snagged the backstrap of Grammy’s bra, which was waving in the breeze. Bonnie, concluding that her herding job had finished, sat between Don and me. All of us — except Grammy — doubled over with laughter as the moose galloped across the hayfield with the bra bouncing up and down.

Jogging in gum rubber boots, Grammy grabbed the porch broom and chased the moose. Waving it above her head, she yelled, “Drop that bra! Damn you, drop that bra!” The moose and bra disappeared into the woodlot. Short of breath and ornery as a ground hornet, she snapped at Grampa, “Florian, don’t just stand there. Surely you and the boys have chores to finish in the barn.”

A month later, we spotted the tattered bra on a witch hazel bush as our team of workhorses twitched pine logs from the woodlot to the barnyard. In a long, low, and drawn-out tone he’d learned from Grampa, Don hollered “Whooooooa!” and the horses stopped and swished their tails. I handed the bra to Grampa, which he called an “over the shoulder boulder holder.” Back in the barnyard, he unchained the logs, turned the horses out to pasture, and strolled into the farmhouse. Don and I were on his heels, anticipating fireworks.

At the slate sink, Grampa used a tablespoon of Grammy’s hand-churned butter to remove pine pitch from his large, calloused hands. He then morphed into a magician by removing the hidden bra from his bib overalls. Holding it aloft, he said, “Lue, look what the boys found down in the woodlot.” When Grammy looked his way, he teased her. “The mice chewed a few holes in each cup. But I think you’d look awfully pretty wearing it to bed tonight.” Never one to laugh, she replied, “Oh hush, Florian! You ought not talk like that in front of the boys,” and then shooed us out of the kitchen.

Now 73, my memories of our daily farm life become more precious each year. Like many rural Maine youngsters in the 1950s and ’60s, my life lessons were forged on the farm, especially love of family, finding humor in hard work, and an abiding respect of the natural world. In my youth, Maine supported over 4,000 dairy farms. Today, there are fewer than 140. Sadly, most of today’s rural youngsters will never experience the joy of seeing an amorous bull moose approach a cow barn, let alone pitch hay bales onto a horse-drawn oak wagon, hear a cow bell at sunset, be enchanted by fireflies on a midsummer night, or inhale the sweet fragrance of new-mown hay. Spending much of my youth on our grandparents’ farm was one of life’s greatest blessings.

Ron Joseph of Sidney is author of Bald Eagles, Bear Cubs, and Hermit Bill: Memories of a Maine Wildlife Biologist, published by Islandport Press