We have a big bay window in our bedroom.  This area doesn’t get much direct sunlight so the snow really stays and is quite deep!  When I look out the window at the woods and snow, I am always reminded of one of my favorite Robert Frost poems, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” 

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here
To see his woods fill up with snow. . . . 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.

Friday night I turned off the light after reading in bed for a while.  Bill had dropped off, and Stella was sleeping on the floor under the window.  All of a sudden, the motion sensor light behind the house came on.  Since I was still awake, I hopped out of bed to see what triggered the light.  There he (or maybe she?) was, right outside our window.  A huge moose!  His coat was a beautiful shiny brown under the spotlights.   If the window had been open, I could have almost touched his back from inside.  

I quickly whispered to Bill, “Come here quick and look at this!  Hurry!”  About that time Stella woke up and, figuratively speaking, wet her little doggie pants!  Here was the evil moose-creature about three or four feet from where she had been peacefully sleeping.  Needless to say, she went ballistic.  We grabbed her collar to prevent her from trying to lunge against or through the bedroom window.

The moose turned his head and gave an irritated look back at the window, no doubt wondering what all the commotion was about!  He continued to walk slowly along the edge of the house and garage, utilizing the little path that Bill keeps stomped out in the snow.  Our satellite dish is on the roof on the back of the house, close to the bedroom window.  When the snow builds up on the dish and we start to pixelate and lose satellite signal, he heads out back with an extra long broom he rigged up to clear the dish. (Pixelate—isn’t that a great word?)

At this point our visitor made a right turn in front of the garage, out of our sight.  All three of us made a mad dash to the living room to look out of the front window.  There he was in the driveway! He walked over to Bill’s plow truck and checked it out and looked at the giant pile of snow from previous plow jobs.  Apparently, he decided it was too much work to try to go through the snow pile and ambled slowly up the driveway and out of sight.

We all headed back to bed with a bit of an adrenaline surge.  Stella, of course, immediately told me she wanted to go out in the back yard for a potty break.  Oh no!  I know what you want; you just want to run out back to the west side and see if you can see or smell the moose.  I don’t think so!  We have a seven-foot fence around the yard.  Does that tell you something?  On the west side of the property the seven-foot fence is reduced to about a four-foot fence due to deep, crusty snow.  The moose could have hopped over that in a flash.  The moose generally go down the easement on the west side, so I wasn’t taking any chances!

Interestingly, I had just mentioned to Bill the other day that we hadn’t seen the moose lately.  I guess I jinxed it!  Now I am back to peering apprehensively into the woods every time we take a walk.  I suppose I could take my pistol, but that is a challenge too.  (Yes, I am one of those people with a concealed carry permit!)  If I put it in my pants pocket, the weight practically makes my pants fall down.  I guess I could get a holster or something, maybe a nice tooled leather with fringe, just like I envisioned as a little kid, but not sure how that works with a semi-automatic pistol. 

We don’t hunt or shoot things, but I have had hunters tell me that it takes a really high-powered rifle to take down a moose.  My little pistol would probably just be like an irritating little gnat.  The $64,000 question (anyone besides me old enough to remember that old TV show?) is if I fire my pistol, would it scare him off or piss him off? I’m not sure want to do a trial run on that.  As always, life in the mountains is never dull!

©Eclectic Grandma, 2020

If you’d like to look at last week’s blog, “Musings on the Coronavirus and Stephen King,” just high the back arrow at the beginning of end of this post.  Thanks!