The mad moose of Lewiston

Here's another piece of urban legend or folklore, depending on your preference for terminology.

Back in the mid-1980s, a friend of mine grew up in Lewiston, Maine. Her family lived on a sideroad off of Grove Street. Not too far away was a sandpit which was accessed via trails that ran past a marshy wildland that ran in back of the neighborhood.

Among the local kids who used to hang out in the sandpit, riding their bikes and so on, there was a story that circulated -- the Legend of the Brainless Moose!

Legend had it that the moose had a parasitic worm that entered its head through its ear and ate away at its brains over the years. The result was a crazed, rampaging moose with only half a brain left! If you heard rustling in the undergrowth, you knew the moose was coming, and you got out of there fast!

Lewiston is no stranger to rampaging and roaming moose, with or without brainworms, according to other friends who grew up in the area. I'm sure other groups of kids in the area had their own tales, but it'll be hard to top this one!

Watch out for falling moose!

Photo by Vilseskogen, used under the terms of Creative Commons.

A very intriguing report from the Kennebec Journal. ONLY IN MAINE!

Thanks to Jean K. for spotting this gem!

'A moose fell from the sky'
Submitted By Larry Grard,
Staff Writer
on Tuesday, May. 12 at 1:15 pm

CLINTON -- The moose that “fell from the sky,” in an observer’s words, landed on its head and quickly died.

The yearling bull nearly took a man with him after it fell from the Interstate 95 overpass onto Hinckley Road.

Shirley Bailey, assistant town clerk, got the frantic call shortly after 8 a.m. today.

The caller was driving along the road when he saw the moose fall.

Bailey recalled his comments: “I was driving under the bridge on Hinckley Road and a moose fell from the sky.”

The man was “a little shook up,” Bailey said. “It was quite frightening, I guess.”

Minutes later, the Waldo County Sheriff’s Department took a call of a young bull moose on I-95, not far away in Burnham.

[Source]

More here at the Lewiston Sun Journal.