“Where can I go to see a moose?” is frequently asked by visitors. While I can simply point to my lawn for deer, my neighborhood for foxes or any number of side roads for turkeys, moose are elusive. My standard response is, “I’ve lived in the Adirondacks for 35 years, and I haven’t seen one yet.”

And it is not for a lack of trying. As a result of my nerdish research, I know where the most sightings occur, their preferred habitat and their diet. When we travel, my family mocks me as I sit sideways in my seat, scouring bogs, streams and other wetlands for just a glimpse of a moose.

“Beautiful view, isn’t it?” hubby Bill might say.

“You know what would make it better?” I usually respond.

Heavy sigh. “I know, a moose.”

I grin and peer out the window, forever hopeful.

What is so frustrating is a series of near misses. The social media post of a moose ambling down a highway I had traveled an hour before. Other parents heading to a high school game have a moose cross the road in front of them. Thirty years ago, a young bull ambled down my street seconds after I had left for work. Tracks in my Vermontville front yard were discovered after a busload of students observed a moose standing there.

A few years ago, there were communal sightings just outside of town. So many people stopped alongside the road that the Department of Transportation needed to put up no-parking signs. While I didn’t make it there for the frenzy, I thoroughly examined the area in the weeks that followed. Initially, I was convinced the dark shape by the river was a distant moose. But since it remains in the same spot three years later, I am certain it is a dead tree.

Once, driving on a rainy night, there was a sudden absence of reflection in the distance. Instantly, we dropped our speed because moose-vehicle collisions are notoriously fatal. As we crept forward, I reflected that with my luck, a car accident was the only way I’d ever meet my goal. If that does prove to be the case, I want the first line of my obituary to read, “She finally saw her moose.”

This weekend, it seemed that my misfortune had finally changed. Our journey along Route 3 from Watertown had been uneventful. I was in my customary perch, and Bill was picking on me as is his custom. But when we hit Piercefield, there was movement in the trees. A dark shape, the edge of a wet area … could it be?

“Moose!” I yelled.

Bill, in the most focused driving of his life, slowly pulled to the shoulder. “Where?”

“Back there, in the tree line.”

He started to back up.

“No, no, no. You need to turn around!” My heart was pounding. I was practically crawling over the seat, trying to get another view of the fabled animal.

With a sigh, he turned the car around and stopped where I indicated. “Where?”

“Over there, do you see movement in the trees?”

“I see it … are you sure it’s a moose, not a bear?”

“It isn’t a bear, look how it moves.”

“Ah, Lynda, it’s pretty small.”

“Yeah, but …” The animal started to come into clearer view.

“Honey, there’s a tag on its ear. And look, there’s a barbed wire fence.”

I looked. He had a point.

“Lynda, that’s not a moose. It’s a cow. In fact, there’s a herd of cows.”

Once again, he was right. On closer inspection, this was a cow pen, and several of the animals, both brown and black, were huddled some distance away from the one I had spotted.

“Idiot,” I berated myself, “a cow definitely does not look like a moose.”

And, in my disappointment, I modified my humorously dark statement. I concluded that when my days finally come to an end, my epitaph should read, “She never did see her moose.”