Moose!

They looked just like this!

I don’t know why it is that when I see a wild animal, an exciting one, my instinctive reaction is to call out its name. (Shouldn’t evolution have eliminated that trait by now?)

There was the time, a few summers ago, that Todd and I were bicycling home from town early one morning with a newspaper. For some reason he was well behind (he must have given me a big head start) when I came across a black bear and three cubs in a meadow. I looked back down the road, saw Todd peddling towards me, and tried to signal to him that there was something for him to see.

My signaling, apparently, looked to him like mere flailing of arms, and he yelled, “What?” I yelled back, “A BEAR AND THREE CUBS!,” as I pointed to the meadow. Needless to say, by the time he got there, the bear family was long gone. Hmmm….

He looked just like this!

Then there was the morning this winter when Todd was out of town and I noticed that our dog Beau was very excited about something he saw outside the dining room picture window. I thought perhaps it was a squirrel, ho hum, but when I looked out, a bobcat was strolling by, very close to the house. I said, “bobcat, bobcat, bobcat!” Now, in my own defense, the bobcat couldn’t hear me, and if Todd had been at home, he would most likely have been in his office directly overhead. He would have certainly heard me and would have looked out his window. Shazam! He would have seen the bobcat.

Actually my photo!

I slipped out onto our front porch with my iPhone, at which point the cat heard me, stopped, and looked right at me. I swear he was thinking, “ho hum.” I took a few photos with my phone. In none of them is there any sign of a bobcat. But here’s a photo of his tracks in the snow coming out of the woods. It’s the only photo in this post that I actually took. Hmmm…

Not my moose, but just like this!

Finally, just this afternoon I was walking down the trail through the woods that leads to the garden above the farmhouse, on my way to my mother’s house for tea. Just as I stepped out of the woods I heard a load crunching sound, looked down along the tree line and saw a very big, very brown animal crash into the woods. It was far too big and klutzy to be a whitetail deer. I’m absolutely positive that it was a moose. And so, naturally, I called out, “MOOSE!” It had already seen me, so no harm done, but I don’t think that Steve is going to take me deer hunting. Just sayin’.

So, I sent a text message to my son in San Francisco, which said: “I saw a moose on the way to tea!” This, of course, begs the question, “Did the moose actually stay for tea?” I wish.

News Flash! Update!

I found the bobcat in one of my iPhone photos! It’s a miracle! Okay, it’s a terrible quality photo, but by gum, it’s proof! (Squint when you look at it. It helps.)