Biker breaks his pelvis in collision with moose rump
Cottingham, 80, is still in Colorado, but hoping to get back on his two-wheeler.
JACKSON — On a Tuesday in late September, Mike Cottingham was just starting a bike ride in The Aspens, where he lives. He was pedaling fast, about 15 mph, when he looked down at his sprocket.
Then, he looked up and saw it. A very large it. About 3 feet in front of him.
“I didn’t see a moose walking,” Cottingham said from a hospital bed in Denver, a week and a half later. “I saw a moose right in front of me. And that moose was walking at a very fast gait. It was running.”
The 80-year-old, about to turn 81, couldn’t stop in time. He rammed, bike-first, into the bull’s rump.
Then, he fell, clipped into the pedals. Cottingham wasn’t thinking about what would come next.
“I didn’t think about falling and breaking my femur and my pelvis,” he said.
But break them he did. Cottingham fractured both of his pelvic plates. The crash drove his left femur through his pelvic bone, shattering it into about 20 pieces. He also broke two ribs and had internal bleeding.
None of those injuries, however, came from the moose, an ornery species known for trampling people who get too close. In the past few years, Teton County residents have been trampled in Wilson, Teton Village, along Fall Creek Road. People have also been charged in Cache Creek. Most incidents involved dogs, which Cottingham didn’t have. And the moose didn’t trample him. Instead, it ran away after the collision.
Why, exactly, the bull moose ran into the road is a bit unclear.
Cottingham didn’t see it until just before he smacked its backside with his body. The neighbor whose yard the moose fled to was gone.
But that neighbor, Scott Fossel, does have trail cameras that provided clues. When Fossel reviewed the footage he saw the male in his backyard. He also saw a cow.
Moose have begun mating and, while Fossel never saw the bull approaching the cow the day of Cottingham’s accident, he did see footage of the cow running around with two calves. He also nabbed a separate video of the bull moose running toward the road, right about when he and Cottingham collided.
Fossel assumes the bull made a pass at the female, and got rejected — violently.
“He’s in the rut,” Fossel said. “He’s been out digging a wallow in my backyard, trying to make himself more attractive to the cow. But she had her two calves and said, ‘No.’ She’s not in the mood.”
Whatever the reason, the moose was flying when Cottingham hit him.
“He was moving as fast as you’re going to see a moose move,” he said. “He came out of nowhere.”
In the mating season, known as the “rut,” moose can be unpredictable. After spending most of the summer eating, gaining weight, migrating and resting, their attention turns to reproduction.
Bull moose, in particular, are known for their focus on romance. They dig wallows, pits of mud where they pee and roll in the urine-soaked soil (urine is considered an aphrodisiac for females). After digging, bulls will relentlessly pursue cows, which makes them behave erratically and aggressively towards humans.
“Long story short: Stay away from moose,” said Brad Hovinga, regional wildlife supervisor of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, summarizing safety tips for the rut. “Moose have one thing on the brain this time of year and nothing’s going to get in their way. I wonder if he even realized a bike ran into him.”
That’s a question humans will never answer. But the bull was unfazed enough to return to Fossel’s yard.
“He was out there this morning bedded down,” Fossel said. “He returned to the scene of the crime.”
Cottingham, for his part, faced a dizzying medical saga after the Sept. 24 accident.
Friends who saw the collision immediately called 911 and an ambulance from Jackson Hole Fire/EMS was on scene within five minutes, he said. Cottingham, a 50-year Jackson Hole resident who founded Wilderness Adventures with his wife, Helen, knew two of the paramedics, who had worked for him.
Cottingham was transported to St. John’s, thinking he’d only broken a hip. But after the scale of his injuries became clear (and he received three quarts of blood), the hospital ordered an air ambulance, which flew him to Eastern Idaho Medical Center in Idaho Falls. Cottingham’s family and the doctors in Idaho decided he needed even greater care, so he was flown to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus outside of Denver. Finally, on Sept. 30, Cottingham went into surgery.
On Oct. 3, when he spoke with the News&Guide, Cottingham was in good spirits, taking a plethora of painkillers and a little bit of oxygen. The day before, he’d started physical therapy for the first time, and was able to stand on his right foot for about 30 seconds with the therapists’ help. On Oct. 3, he was able to stand up twice with assistance and sit upright in a chair for an hour, “a huge achievement,” he said.
On Tuesday, Cottingham had been moved to a 12-day acute physical rehabilitation program in Broomfield, Colorado, part of the University of Colorado. He’s making progress and therapists are working him hard. He plans to be in Colorado for a few more weeks before heading back to Jackson.
The longtime valley resident is an avid cycler. On the day he was hit, he was planning to bike one of his favorite routes along the bike path from The Aspens to the south border of Teton Park and back.
How long he’ll be off his bike is unclear. It will depend on how fast he progresses. He and his wife, Helen, had planned to take a cycling trip in Southern France next June. It’s not off the table yet.
“You’ve just got to be positive. Life is to be lived and not spent,” Cottingham said, relaying his family’s motto. “That’s what we’ve always felt. That’s what we’ve done our entire lives. We’re going to be back on.
“I’m not going to transition, if I can help it, to something like going on short walks.”
Throughout his saga, Cottingham has realized his ordeal isn’t all that rare. One of his orthopedic surgeon’s fathers hit a cow — an honest, bovine cow — on a bike in Steamboat, Colorado. One Tuesday, a physical therapist told him about another patient who hit a deer and had major head injuries.
Generally, Cottingham keeps his head on a swivel, looking for wildlife. Even before the accident, he urged other people to do the same. But in late September, he said he was caught off guard.
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and it just happened,” Cottingham said. “People who go out on their bikes need to be aware how serious these repercussions are.”
His friend, Fossel, was still a bit incredulous about the whole affair.
“Only in Wyoming could somebody on a bicycle T-bone a moose,” he said.
This story was published on October 8, 2024.