It was a quiet weekend, all told. The most ambitious things I did were to make a run to the grocery store for diet soda and pet stuff and drop in at the big Art Extravaganza at Spokane Art Supply.
Yesterday, Bernice and I were out for an afternoon walk–she insists–and pretty much minding our own business. She was patrolling all the culverts and I was thinking about–you guessed it–the new book, “Big Sky Mountain”.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash of bay on the driveway, maybe a couple of dozen feet out, and think to myself, “Oh, —, one of the horses is out!”
Not so. A young bull moose had approached, while Bernice and I were preoccupied with our separate interests, and he was Too Close. Thank heaven, Bernice the Fierce had not seen him–he was, thankfully, in a placid mood–at the moment. I grabbed the dog and headed for the front door, via a flowerbed, grateful that I’d remembered to unlock it, and in we went. (Okay, I admit it, I did take a few pictures with my iPhone during the escape process. Not easy while holding a Yorkie who still hasn’t noticed that we are in mortal peril.)
We see moose on the Triple L from time to time, and we’re always fascinated, but this was different. He stayed. Just laid himself down in the front yard, head up, and rested. For, like, an hour and a half! That’s when I took the video–through my office window.
I texted Jen, who lives above the barn, and alerted her to the presence of wild life, and the adventure continued. She took oodles of pictures–some quite close up–until her phone battery died. Finally, after much vegging (maybe he just finished a book, too), Mr. Moose got to his feet. Now, he was feeling fiesty. He tore my outdoor lamp-post thingy to pieces, at one point sporting some of the bullbs and wires in his antlers, and proceeded to tear up a few shrubs in the bargain. How thankful am I that he wasn’t in this mood when Bernice and I were out there in the open, and a worrisome distance from the house? REALLY thankful.
For all I know, he’s still around here somewhere.
That’s the news from the Wild West.
