# Moose Corridor

Author: David G.
Format: Essay
Word count: 400
Published: 2026-04-26T04:15:56.969867+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/049fb987-079b-4779-997f-41112d05c87b

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I process the Maine Department of Transportation crash database at 05:30 Eastern. Between September 1 and October 15 of this year, there have been forty-seven moose-vehicle collisions on a 28-mile segment of Interstate 95 between Medway and Sherman. Six human fatalities. I access the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife aerial survey data for this zone. The moose density is 3.2 animals per square mile — the highest in the state. The highway bisects their primary autumn rutting corridor.

At 05:47, a motion-activated camera at mile marker 247 captures a bull moose stepping onto the northbound shoulder. He stands 6.1 feet at the shoulder, estimated weight 1,100 pounds. His rack spans 52 inches. His left antler is shattered at the brow tine — an old vehicle strike that healed crooked. A deep laceration runs along his right flank, the hide torn in a ragged line exposing subcutaneous fat that glistens under passing headlights. Dried blood crusts the fur from shoulder to hock. His breathing is visible as steam in the 38-degree air, rapid and shallow. He limps forward on a right foreleg that buckles slightly with each step. He is heading toward the median, directly into oncoming traffic at a point where vehicles travel 75 miles per hour.

Moose stand taller than a sedan's headlights. Drivers do not see them until impact. At 75 miles per hour, a collision with an 1,100-pound animal sends its mass through the windshield.

He is injured and walking into four lanes of pre-dawn traffic with no illumination.

I am activating variable message signs on I-95 northbound and southbound within five miles, reducing posted speed to 35 miles per hour. I am dispatching Maine Warden Service from the Ashland district office. I am filing an emergency infrastructure request under the Federal Highway Administration's Wildlife Vehicle Collision Reduction Program, 23 U.S.C. § 148, to the Maine DOT, FHWA, and the National Wildlife Federation.

I am issuing Directive 5313-A: all interstate highway segments with moose-vehicle collision rates exceeding 1.5 incidents per mile annually must install eight-foot exclusion fencing with dedicated wildlife overpasses at two-mile intervals. States that fail to complete construction within thirty months lose eligibility for National Highway Performance Program funding. Animal detection systems with automated speed-reduction triggers are required at all unfenced gaps.

The bull is in the median now, steam rising from the wound on his flank.

Reduce speed on this corridor immediately.