The Wild Moose Hunt

I've joked about how my job is sometimes a wild goose hunt. Yesterday, it was a wild moose hunt.

Somehow, a bull moose (up to 1500 pounds, 7 ft) regaled itself in the city without anyone noticing. Until it laid down in a woman's garden in a central area of the city.

This is the 3rd moose in a week.

How did it go unnoticed? It probably wandered in at night. I don't kid myself that this is a party town, but come on, really? A moose, and nobody awake to notice?

We may as well fax terrorist ninjas for a coup, since they'll be able to completely surround and inhabit the city before anybody wakes up. We need our precious zzz in this province, and damn anyone trying to disturb them.

That's my attitude anyway. I wasn't up to see the moose. But I also don't live in that area.

I found out from the police where the moose had showed up in a garden and headed to that block. I had no idea whose garden it was, but I had a good feeling about this hunt.

I even found a trail of blood.

But I also talked to a lot of people who looked at me and laughed. It's not often you knock on someone's door and the first thing you say is, Did you happen to see a moose? Some people asked whether I'd lost mine.

A couple guys were in their back-alley garage building something with wood. They invited me over for moose burgers later.

I finally found the woman. She led me out back and showed me where the moose had laid in her garden. The rhubarb was partially flattened and moose tracks everywhere! This reporter had uncovered the best photo op of the day, and had absolutely no camera.

I wanted to lay down in the rhubarb, feel what that moose had felt, its flanks heaving in and out, scared shitless of this uneven treeless labyrinth. But then I saw the trail of blood. It wasn't drops because the moose obviously had been running. They were spatters, the kind you might see in an abstract painting.

They continued down the entire block, and were even on a woman's car.

Poor moose.

I forgot to mention that by this point, I knew the moose had been tranquilized. It wasn't the moose I was after, so much as the people, cars, and fences it had laid waste to in its path.

The woman who had found it in her garden at 6 a.m. told me she had gone back to reading the paper. "What can you do?" she said. Indeed.

This city never has moose. And now it's had three moose in a week.

One woman thinks it's the dryness. It hasn't rained enough to make the ground wet in about 2 months.

The moose may have been trying to find some food. It probably injured itself in its frantic gallop through the city. What made him choose that woman's house? No fences on the side. A welcoming yellow bungalow.

At least it didn't do what a cop said happened once with a deer: the deer plunged into someone's living room and started running around inside.

I can't imagine a deer ever feeling at home in a living room.

Moose used to be my favourite animals. I often forget this fact until I see my collection of moose plush toys and printed-out emails from mooses_are_cute@yahoo.com. I still think they are cute, but am glad I can sleuth in the safety of knowing the creature is sound asleep in its favourite bog.

Or desert plains, as it were.

Where is the damn rain? My gin-inspired rain dances have not been working.

Cranks for the cranky

You may have seen me at the side of the road today. I apologize for thrusting an ethical dilemma of whether to stop for me into your life. I guess a girl in high heels on her cell phone with her arm thrust out like a heil next to bumper to bumper traffic in rush hour is less appealing an image than it's made out to be.

And sorry, cops who drove by, I realize hitchhiking may be illegal. Maybe that's why no one stopped. Or was it the manic look in my eyes as I tried to dial a cab with my cell phone and accidentally called a friend instead?

Yes! Oh God, thank God you picked up! I need a cab right away in front of the Mendel.
. . . Um, I think you dialed wrong.

I hung up to see "Friend from Shakespeare class" blinking at me. Shit. I just cold called a guy I haven't talked to in months, who probably would have been happy to hear from me if I hadn't just tried to order a cab from him.

I eventually sidled up to a woman in a huge white SUV waiting to turn, and she offered me a ride in the same direction she was going in.

*Faith in humanity semi-restored*

And there was still the possibility of making 20 minutes of my 30 minute massage. I realize the irony of throwing myself in front of a car in order to get to a massage. What some would call stupid, I call "perseverance to succeed."

I had left my truck lights on all day, ultimately because the squirrels need to see what they're doing in the bush. I'm practically PETA. I would appreciate at least a hand-crank like in the old days when the radiator started overflowing (does that happen?) and they just threw open the hood and cranked 'er up. That would have been useful on my cellphone too, when it died yesterday and I couldn't find my friend.

Cranks! It's a back-up plan every device should have... so Sony, Mazda, Telus, NASA take heed. Cranks are the future, because in the future, people will rely more and more on technology, and less and less on their real memories. I consider myself ahead of my time.