Yesterday morning began like most mornings do.  Coffee was brewed, breakfast made, lunches packed, and people sent off to work and summer football practice. I was giving myself the celebratory pat on the back (you know, go Self! They are fed. They are packed. They are launched into their day and it isn't even 8am!) when I thought I saw something move back behind the trees. The thing I thought I saw was a pony.  There is no logical reason for this other than once upon a very long time ago we had such a pony.  That pony never scaled the side of a mountain however. And that didn't happen yesterday either.  

Nope. 

Much as it may have looked like a pony bum for a minute there, it was not a pony in my yard.  It was a…..

MOOSE!

oh.my.word.   

It was a gosh honest truth, real live MOOSE and it was just meandering around the yard nibbling on trees til it got full and decided right there would be a perfect place to….

…sit a spell.

In my YARD, y'all.  

And there he sat for the better part of the morning, with us periodically peeking out at him til he up and wandered off, all casual like. As if this sort of thing just happens.  

Our neighbors said they spot one every once in a blue moon and generally they don't cause trouble. We watched from a safe distance just the same.  Moose are prey, not predators, but they can reach speeds of 35mph when they are defending their young or during mating season (in the fall) or say, when the neighbor Corgi tries to herd them and they get super annoyed.

They sound like a cow which we didn't know until later in the evening when he returned and made actual cow sounds.  Our neighbor texted me from her porch. We couldn't see at first in the dark until she said he was over eating our apple tree.  This enlightened us to two things.  First, we have an apple tree. Who knew?  Second, we probably shouldn't count on a lot of apples. 

He has made one more appearance so far, chasing the aforementioned Corgi back to her porch early this morning. To be fair she sorta had it coming. By all accounts this doesn't happen very often so this may be our only opportunity to see such a magnificent creature so close.   Still, I will probably look over to the hillside in the mornings just in case…