Snowflower
by Fiona Kennard
Title
Snowflower
Artist
Fiona Kennard
Medium
Photograph
Description
Here lately, coming home from the gym I would run into Mama Moose and her little one. I'm always so thrilled to see a Moose! I thought I would give her a name........I named her Snowflower!
Having said that.....I have doing a lot of research about Winter Ticks on Moose! It saddens me to see what these majestic animals are going through. Winter ticks are a different species than the familiar Lyme-disease-spreading blacklegged (or deer) ticks that we all worry about in the summer. They’re larger, prey on hoofed mammals such as moose, deer, elk, caribou, and horses, and feed off their hosts during—you guessed it—the winter.
Winter ticks have only one host during their lifetimes. The larvae attach to an unlucky moose in the fall, mature into adults, and stay there until the spring (late March to early May), when they detach, and then die. A minor tick infestation might not affect a moose much at all, but a severe case will drive it to groom aggressively (licking and biting itself, and rubbing against trees), which causes excessive hair loss. Usually this is concentrated at the head and shoulders, but the moose can lose fur from anywhere that it rubs. Along with having a patchy coat, tick-infested moose are often thin, because they abandon normal feeding behaviour and spend more time grooming instead.
I have seen what they call "Ghost Moose" .... It is heartbreaking to see what Winter Ticks can do to a Moose.
Uploaded
April 28th, 2017
Statistics
Viewed 392 Times - Last Visitor from New York, NY on 04/12/2024 at 3:55 PM
Embed
Share
Sales Sheet
