I sympathized with John Harrigan, outdoor writer for the Union Leader in New Hampshire, in his article yesterday about the Internet famous moose in harness. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of following this seemingly innocent and entertaining story, follow this link to the second of two posts I did about the photo of the big bull moose that APPEARS to be wearing a horse hitch ready to haul out another twitch of logs.
Is it “photoshopped”? You know what? Who cares. It’s an piece of entertainment and that’s all it was ever intended to be from my perspective. Once I posted the picture, I began getting emails from readers along with many other photos and links to photos of other moose pictures posing in what appears to be “domesticated” situations. Many were works of history and others were clearing doctored photos. I especially am fond of the cowboy one.
We’ve all enjoyed the pictures and to those who have emailed me and sent stories and photos, I want to say thank you. I DO REALLY APPRECIATE IT! But some people need to lighten up a little and take things for what they are. I think John Harrigan got more of an earful than he expected when he suggested the bull moose attired in hitch garb was faked using photo software.
People who write or speak or do both have a wry saying, which is that often it’s not what you said or wrote that gets attention, it’s what some people think you wrote or said.
I did not state, for instance, that it would be impossible to harness a moose. In fact I have seen several quite genuine pictures of moose in harness over the years, taken decades before there was anything like Photoshop.
What I said was that there’s a relatively recent moose-in -harness photo racing all over the Internet (reproduced below), and the first thing I thought when I first saw it was “Fake.” The man in the picture, for instance, appears to be bending over to pick up a horse’s foot, only there’s no horse’s foot, and in fact, no horse. The show-piece harness is pretty elaborate. And that bit-in-the-teeth part is a nice touch.
If you will recall in my original post about the photo, I spun a yarn to lead people to believe what they were seeing was true – or not. I think most people believed that what they saw in the photo and story was whatever they chose to get out of it, which was my intention. This is great entertainment!
So it doesn’t matter whether the photo was real or doctored. It’s a great photo that can be used from now until eternity to “entertain” anyone in the mood for entertainment. If they’re not, they can go suck on another sour lemon. Nyuck, nyuck!
Tom Remington
