Life in Alaska

I knew there was something that I forgot to mention about yesterday. The monster that terrorized my mom's dog.

My mom's Shi Tzu was unhappy just around dawn yesterday and she called me in to see just what was wrong with the poor thing. He was apparently snarling and biting at her as she tried to sleep. I checked the house for fire, checked on dad, the whole drill, and found nothing. Went back to report that everything seemed fine. She asked me to have him show me the trouble. My first thought was, of course, "yeah, sure mom, he'll just tell me what's wrong." But being a dutiful child I asked the wookie (the shi tzu) to show me the trouble. He reluctantly leapt off her bed and headed down the hall.

It was cute. Every fre cautious steps he would stop and look back to make sure I was right behind him as he led me to the end of the hall where he paused. After a moment of apparently screwing up his courage he started forward again and led me to the edge of the boundary between the front room and the dining room. Stopping just shy of where the carpet ends he stared at the corner of the house by the back door and let out a low growl. Hmmm...

Like the good little disposable extra in a horror film, I went to investigate.

Figuring the neighbor's dog was on the porch I slowly opened the door and peeked out. Nothing. Hmm... Look out a bit more and look to the left down the porch for my brother's cats to be getting into things. Nothing. Look right to the log garage for the cats or neighbor's dog. Nothing. Perplexing. I look across to my brother's place to see if there is something up over there and that's when I heard it.

A low settling 'ceeeerrrruuuuunch' of something compacting snow. To my right. Toward the log garage. Okay, what's there? Nothing. I'm frowning and looking at the garage and scanning that direction when I see it.

Calm as can be, a cartonist could not have done a better job of animation for it, this head comes around the very edge of the house and looks at me. Surprised as I am based on the way the eyes widened and he doubletimed it backward then out toward the driveway goes the moose.

He wasn't a very big one (relatively speaking), just maybe a two year old. His tracks when I checked them later were 7 inches long. He had been leaning up against the building like a horse leaning against a barn. Apparently, based on the tracks I followed, he had gone all the way around the house, sticking close to the sides, eating the plants that were not covered by the snow.

After he left the side of the house he went over and started to go into my brother's garage, but the dogs apparently scared him out of there. Or he recalled my brother chasing him out of there a few mornings before.

Just another day in Alaska. ::snicker::