Karolina and I were spending a long weekend at our favourite Ontario getaway spot,
Laurentian Lodge (by the way, this place is absolutely amazing, it's a long drive from Toronto but it's worth every single kilimotre and litre of gas!!).
One of our regular activities at the LL is canoing on Mikel Lake. In the morning when we were renting a canoe, Rob, a great guy who runs the place, mentioned that a moose had been seen in the area a few days ago. Hesitantly, I decided to take my Nikon D40 with us. It's not waterproof, so I was a bit concerned about getting it wet. It turned out to be a wise decision!
It was an absolutely windless, sunny day. The trees were throwing undisturbed reflections on the mirror of the lake. It was so quiet you could prefectly hear the brids chirping including a beatiful kingfisher that flew over our canoe. The only intruding noise was coming from our effortless paddling.
We are wildlife geeks so we were very excited about a possibility of seeing a moose especially that I've never seen one before!! (I know, I know... it's emberassing to live in Canada for almost 6 years and not to see a moose...).
Finally we got lucky. It was standing in a knee-high water at the other side of the lake. I took out our camera took some shots but when we started approaching her, she (it was a cow) tripped in a swampy water, quickly regained her balance and kept slowly, very distinctively, moving back towards the tree line where she eventually dissapeared. I wish we had a chance to get closer and get a better look but I'm still very happy I finally got to see a moose. I was most impressed by her size and graceful walk.
Quick Facts about Moose:
Type: Mammal
Diet: Herbivore
Average lifespan in the wild: 15 to 20 years
Size: Height at shoulder, 5 to 6.5 ft (1.5 to 2 m)
Weight: 1,800 lbs (820 kg)
You can read more about this animal
here.
The next day after seeing a moose we rented a canoe again hoping to get some better shots of this huge mammal. Moose didn't show up but on our way back we spotted a family of otters. 2 adults and 2 small ones. We started following them but had hard time keeping up with their pace and frequent direction changes. I think they were using different defense techniques treating us as potential danger. At first they were all swimming together, a moment later they split up sending one adult one way and the other one along with the kids in the opposite direction. Amazing. They continued to communicate throughout the entire episode. Eventually we stopped following them as we didn't want to scare them off too much. It was a great experience to interact with these elusive animals. 
