Moose in the hood, not in the house!
Yesterday I got a text from Ted: “There’s a god damned moose on the hill across from our patio.”
What he meant was “this place is f*&#ing magical.” To get it via text without tone of voice gave it another funny interpretation. My first thought was that the hill across from our apartment is also occupied by a church, so I wondered why the moose’s god has damned it, and if it is there asking for forgiveness.
On the “magical” interpretation, it’s like you come to Norway and you get a punch card with all of the Norway experiences: snow, Northern Lights, cheese slicers, paper clips, knitting, cross country skiing, moose, reindeer (live or in a meal, we’ve had both, now both with moose too), fjords, coffee all day, speke skinke, brown cheese, kaviar in a tube, knekke brød, the letters å, æ, and ø, winter dark, midnight sun…. We are still waiting to check off the troll sighting on the list, and we get into the “bonus” section next week when we go to hyttas (family cabins) with friends!
The kids were less impressed than I was when I got home. They saw it on their way to school that morning, saw it again on the way home, which is when Ted saw it and they took pictures with Anders’ fancy camera and telephoto lens.
But sad news today, via school friends and specifics from the 11 year old brother of Nora’s friend: they killed the moose last night. The moose had showed up on the playground when kids were there, and there is a report that it butted a car. Apparently they were hoping that it would go away on its own, but when it didn’t figure out how to leave and seemed aggressive, they put it down. Nora said that there is blood, poop, and an internal organ left out on the hill. Sad, but we understand the danger.
The last picture here is one that I took on my way home a few weeks ago of what I thought were moose, but it was kind of sasquatch-reporting effort based on blurry pictures of brown things, but now I have proof that moose are in town. This area give them a much bigger place to be, father from people. I walk across some wide open fields and the moose were in the distance and opposite from my way home. I walked toward them for awhile to get a better look, but I didn’t want to walk too far out of my way and I also didn’t want to get too close. Moose are known to be big, strong, and dangerous. Point taken today.
