A week ago, as the snow melted in the yard, I saw moose tracks, and moose poop. Isn't Google great? I didn't know what moose poop looked like a month ago, and now I do. Anyway, yesterday, when Wanda's brother Jerry and his wife Judy left after too short a visit, they called less than a minute later and said they'd seen two moose just 1/4 mile from our house.
Just now, I looked up and saw a moose just outside the window where I'm typing this. So I grabbed a quick photo and walked outside, where I saw a larger moose in the street. I watched them walk through a neighbor's lawn then got the 2nd shot below.
Oddly, moose are called "elk" in Europe — whereas what we call elk in North America are the 2nd largest deer species (with twig-like horns instead of the palmate antlers of male moose). According to Wikipedia, the world "moose" comes from the Algonquian Eastern Abnaki name "moz", which loosely translates to "twig eater". I guess that explains why I've seen them munching on tree branches in our neighborhood.
Copyright © 2009, by H. Marc Lewis. All rights reserved.