The Scariest Moment of my Life
In August of 2006, my brother (Danny) was getting ready to head back to Idaho after spending the summer vacation here, with my mom. My mom decided to plan a last-minute trip to Hampton Beach with Danny in the middle of the week.
Shane and I were working our summer jobs, but that day I stayed home sick. Mom and Danny left around 8 AM and wouldn’t be back until Sunday, three days away.
At 2 PM Shane calls me from his cell phone and frantically says, “Whitney. I just got a call from Keene Hospital, your mom and Danny were in a car accident.”
My heart didn’t sink, it fell, dramatically, to the pit of my stomach. My mom drove this car:
As I waited impatiently for Shane to arrive, I imagined all sorts of horrific scenes – my mom’s convertible flipping over on a speeding highway, a head-on collision with a Mack truck, a rear-end collision. I literally had a million thoughts of what could have happened.
Shane picked me up and explained that they hit a moose, on the highway. The moose flew directly into their windshield and the car cut it’s body in half, sending it’s hind legs onto the car behind my mom. Shane didn’t know the current condition of my family, as when the paramedics arrived, my mom and brother were covered in glass and the moose’s blood and organs. Try and imagine how terrified I was.
Before I go on, let me introduce pictures of what happened in the Chrysler Convertible vs. Moose accident (click on the photos to read my description:
Mom and Danny made it fine, with just a few scratches from all the pieces of glass. Can you believe it? Danny’s head impacted with the moose’s body, so he had quite the bump on his head, but other than that they were fine.
Even though every thing was fine with them, I couldn’t help but break down when I called my dad, in Idaho, to let him know what happened. I remember my stepmom frantically paging everyone at INL, trying to find my dad to let him know.
Apparently, while they were on a rural highway, my mom was talking to Danny in the passenger seat, contemplating letting him drive, when Danny said “Uh, mom?” A moose was emerging from the woods several hundred feet away. My mom had a second to think, “how awesome of a sight” before the moose ran into the road. My mom slammed on her brakes, remembering there was a woman behind her who had been tailgating them and was more worried about that woman colliding with her back end. The moose hit the car at 65 mph and was immediately sliced in half, with all of it’s insides spewing everywhere.
My mom said that as they were waiting for the EMT to show up, the lady that had been tailgating them before the collision with the moose came over, shaken to the core, and was trying to offer my mom and Danny anything to get the glass, fluids and fur off of them. She had a McDonalds cup that Danny drank straight out of.
As a funny ending to the story, when EMT arrived and started cleaning them off, my brother said, “Hey, I really have to take a dump (oh the charm of 16-year olds), can I go over into the woods?”
Ciao.
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