CODY — When a windshield gets cracked, broken or shattered in an amusing way, might as well have fun with it. That’s what Absaroka Auto Glass in Cody decided to do.
Owner Zack Smith posted a photo of a 2024 BMW 2 Series with a huge spiderweb of broken glass on the driver’s side of the windshield. Then, he challenged people to guess what caused the damage.
“We got some pretty wild ones,” Smith told Cowboy State Daily. “A lot of wildlife, but mostly birds like owls and pheasants. We also got a few drones and one angry girlfriend with a baseball bat.”
There was no such fowl or foul play here.
Jennifer Main got the correct answer at the right speed and won an Absaroka Auto Glass hat for her astonishingly accurate guess.
According to Smith, the damage was caused by a moose butt at 9 mph.
“Normally, it's not as funny of a story behind the incident,” Smith said. “We got a lot of awesome engagement from that post.”
Guess What? Moose Butt
The winner of the contest was posted Wednesday, along with a photo of the damage done by moose’s hindquarters, Smith said the crash actually happened in early December. The vehicle's owner was from Wisconsin and just happened to be driving through Wyoming.
Smith said the owner told him the incident happened near Afton, and as he was cruising along, he encountered a moose on the highway.
“From what I understand, the moose ran out into the road, so he hit the brakes but didn't get stopped quite in time,” Smith said. “He was only going around 9 mph when he hit the back end of the moose.”
Smith said the moose was so big, and the BMW was so tiny that the force of the impact flipped the car around. The driver didn’t know the moose's status after the impact.
“The moose basically sat down on the windshield,” he said.
Aside from the windshield, the BMW appeared to be otherwise unscathed from the collision.
Getting the windshield replaced cost more time than money. Absaroka Auto Glass easily replaced the windshield, but getting the replacement to Cody took longer than anyone expected.
“We could only get one windshield directly from BMW, and it got delayed several weeks,” he said. “The owner had to hunker down in Cody for three weeks until we could get a windshield for him.”
Animal impacts on windshields are common enough. Smith said he replaces a windshield from "a typical animal accident" once or twice a month.
"I see quite a few birds — owls, pheasants, things like that," he said. "Or someone hits a deer, and the deer rolls up and hits the windshield. This was just a funnier incident for us."
The Mighty Moose
Wyoming photographer Jorn Vangoidtsenhoven probably spends more time around moose than anyone. He said anyone who walks away from a moose-vehicle impact is lucky.
“If you drive an average car, a moose’s legs are so long that its body will probably slide into your windshield,” he said. “You hit the legs, and their whole body weight slides over the hood and slams into the windshield.”
Many people don’t perceive the disparity between moose and mule deer. In addition to the size, Vangoidtsenhoven said their road etiquette is very different.
“I've had an accident with a deer in the past,” he said. “They're a fraction of the size and the weight of a moose, which makes deer nimbler. They might try to jump or run away from an ongoing vehicle. Moose just stand there. They don’t try to move or get out of the way.”
Vangoidtsenhoven recalled a near-miss he had with a moose outside Kelly.
“I’m driving along the curvy road near Slide Lake, and suddenly a big black thing is standing on the road around a curve,” he said. “Luckily, I was going the speed limit, 30 mph, so I was able to stop.”
If you look at pictures of moose collisions, most of the hood is intact, and everything above the hood is dented or completely gone.”
Lower The Limit
Vangoidtsenhoven said it was fortunate that the BMW driver had enough time to slow down before hitting the moose. However, he is concerned that many people drive too fast in areas where animals are known to lurk on or near the road.
“I’m always extremely careful driving around Jackson Hole, especially at dusk and dawn,” he said. “I always recommend going the speed limit, or preferably slower, because you never know when a moose will walk out of the scenery and onto the road.”
The death of Grizzly 399 was a potent reminder of the dangers of driving the dark road corridors around Jackson. The Teton County Sherriff’s Office determined the driver who hit and killed the famous grizzly wasn’t at fault, as they were traveling at or very close to the 55-mph speed limit on Highway 89.
The Wyoming Department of Transportation said speed limit changes in the Jackson Valley are unlikely, even in the wake of Grizzly 399's death. Vangoidtsenhoven believes speed limits should be lower along roads wildlife are known to frequent since it would be safer for everyone.
“Even if their mountain roads and speed limits are 45 mph at night, that's still too fast in my mind,” he said. “Wildlife is so unpredictable, and most of those stretches of roads are completely dark at night with no roadside lights. You're coming around the bend, and there's 399, or a moose, or an elk.”
That’s why Vangoidtsenhoven doesn’t underestimate moose, whether photographing them in the wild or simply driving his usual commute through Jackson. A moose butt windshield impact may be amusing, but it could easily have been fatal.
“People don't realize that hitting a moose could be the last thing they do,” he said.
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
