I’ve forgotten my first kiss, but not my first moose sighting.

It occurred in late September, 1958, when my twin brother Don and I, age 6, were shoveling cow manure at our grandparents’ dairy farm one early morning in Mercer. Grampa Yeaton, who was seated on a three-legged stool milking our prize Jersey cows, paused between tugs at the sound of Bonnie’s bark in the pasture. Since our border collie rarely barked, Grampa stuck his head through an open barn window to investigate, turned back to Don and me, and said, “You boys put the shovels in the wheelbarrow and go outside. You don’t want to miss this.”

We stood in the driveway with Grammy Lue, who was returning to the farmhouse with a small wicker basket filled with fresh eggs. Bonnie had circled a large bull moose. After a brief standoff, the bull ran toward the driveway. His heavy hooves pounding the hard ground sounded like the rumbling of a distant thunderstorm. But before we could escape to the porch, the moose veered between the barn and farmhouse. As he bypassed the clothesline, a breeze lifted that morning’s laundry, and an antler tine snagged the back strap of Grammy’s bra.

The sight of a bull moose galloping across a hayfield with a bouncing bra caused Grampa to laugh so hard he nearly choked on his plug of chewing tobacco. My grandmother — a hardened, dour Yankee — did not laugh. Instead, she set down the egg basket, grabbed a broom off the porch, and chased the moose across the field, yelling, “Drop my bra, drop that bra!”

The moose and bra vanished into the woodlot.

A month later, Don and I were helping Grampa twitch a pine log from his woodlot. As his team of Belgian workhorses turned for home, Don spotted the bra attached to a bush. Grampa stuffed it in his bib overalls. Back in the barnyard, he turned the horses loose in the pasture and then entered the farmhouse. Anticipating fireworks, Don and I followed.

“Well, Lue,” he said, “the boys found your bra down in the woodlot.” Like a magician, Grandpa pulled it out of his overalls and held it aloft. Although mice had chewed holes through each cup, the white bra stood in stark contrast to his tobacco-stained dark blue overalls. Grandma’s face turned to stone.

“I think you should wear it to bed tonight,” he chided. “You’d look awfully pretty in it.” Her face instantly turned red with fury.

“Hush, Florian,” she barked, “you ought not talk like that it in front of those boys. Now, tend to your chores in the barn. Git. All of you, skedaddle!”

Ever since that first moose sighting when I was a kid, I’ve never grown tired of seeing moose in the Maine woods. From 1999 until 2019, Registered Maine Guide Greg Drummond and I led dozens of moose-watching trips from Claybrook Mountain Lodge in Highland Plantation (12 miles east of Sugarloaf Mountain, as the crow flies).

To improve our odds of seeing moose, trips were scheduled during the rut, which occurs from mid-September to mid-October. Our two-decade run produced many memorable first moose sightings for our clients. Couples cried with joy; children jumped with excitement; and others were simply awestruck and speechless.

Since cold weather is conducive to breeding moose, a frosty September morning in 2003 held the promise of being an excellent moose-watching day. At dawn, our clients stood on an old tote road in Lexington Township. Using his homemade birchbark megaphone, Greg’s imitation cow moose calls immediately solicited a series of grunts from a bull. For 20 minutes, the large mammal cautiously approached unseen, but not unheard, in the thick forest.

The bull finally stepped into view about 100 feet from us.

Fearful that our clients might be charged and injured by a pugnacious moose, Greg yelled and whacked his wooden canoe paddle against a beech. The handsome bull stood dumbfounded for a solid minute before slowly turning back and disappearing into the forest.

Not all first-time moose-watching hopefuls, though, are able to fulfill their dreams. Once, after I demonstrated how to simulate an estrous cow moose urinating in a pond — a sexually stimulating sound to breeding bulls — a woman on the tour used my empty coffee container to replicate the technique. She filled the can with pond water, stood up, raised her arms about 3 feet above the pond, and slowly dumped its contents. Perfect.

But she didn’t stop. She refilled and emptied the container six more times. Her husband, a urologist, said, “Honey, ease up. If a bull moose hears that, he’s going to conclude that the cow has a urinary tract infection, and he’ll sprint to the next county.”

Between 2015 and 2019, our moose-calling success rate — very high in the early 2000s — plummeted in Maine’s Western mountains. Many weekends produced zero moose. No clients openly complained. But although we had great fun, I felt a twinge of guilt. Folks had paid to see moose, not spruce grouse or Canada jays. Wonderful birds, they agreed during dinner, but not nearly as charismatic as moose.

Here’s what I told our disappointed clients: Winter tick populations — the scourge of moose — are soaring. Maine’s winters are shorter and milder. Our longer, warmer falls provide additional weeks for ticks to attach themselves to moose and in greater numbers. Several Novembers ago, while grouse hunting in a T-shirt in Houlton, I discovered that winter ticks are very active on warm days. As I bushwhacked through an abandoned potato field overgrown with red-osier dogwood, hundreds of tick larvae — each the size and color of a pepper flake — attached themselves to my hunter orange vest.

Moose wandering through brush on warm fall days collect thousands of questing tick larvae. Pregnant cow moose hosting tens of thousands of ticks throughout winter struggle to stay alive. They lose weight, which in turn leads to stillbirths, or the loss of the fetus, or newborns that are severely underweight. Moose with 50,000 to 90,000 ticks often die a slow, horrific death. They can’t manufacture blood fast enough to offset blood loss. A fully engorged winter tick — the size and shape of a large raisin — consumes a milliliter (0.0338 ounces) of moose blood. Over several months, those thousands of ticks will drink gallons of blood from one moose.

Ticks are merely symptoms of a much greater threat: climate change. With thick, dark brown coats, long legs and large bodies, moose are well adapted to survive long, cold winters. Conversely, winter ticks thrive in shorter, milder winters. A small minority of Mainers, including me, cheered the March and April snowfalls this spring. Spring snows benefit moose, because during those months, female winter ticks — each bearing up to 4,000 eggs — drop off moose to lay eggs. If ticks land on snow, their survival rate significantly decreases. Many die of exposure while others are eagerly consumed by blue jays and Canada jays. But if the ticks land on brown leaf litter, their survival rate increases.

White-tailed deer pose an additional threat. As Maine winters become milder, deer are proliferating in northern Maine — moose territory. Deer transmit brainworms, which are rarely lethal to them but nearly always fatal to moose.

Moose have become the face of climate change in the Northwoods. In a 2014 Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences report, 100 Maine scientists concluded that moose — and 55 other vertebrates — are highly vulnerable to climate change.

By the end of this century, if our climate warms further, Maine will likely become inhospitable for its most iconic mammal.

Years from now, instead of telling the story of when I saw my first moose, I’ll be telling about my last.

Ron Joseph, of Sidney, is author of “Bald Eagles, Bear Cubs, and Hermit Bill: Memories of a Maine Wildlife Biologist.” His column appears monthly. 

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