Musings about Moose

Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing ‘Embraceable You’ in spats.
Woody Allen

You want me to sing? (A moose visitor this spring.)

If I was asked to describe typical moose habitat, I would NOT say it was where I live – a prairie landscape dotted with a few stands of aspen and a small body of water that can  hardly be called a lake; farm land and various size acreages; a city of 40,000 people just a mile away, poised to swallow us up.

No, I don’t think of this as moose country, yet every so often a moose or two or three trot past my back yard. They are not there by accident. They are our neighbours.

Right across the road from our house is the hay field where the hawk kids hung out this fall. A few mornings ago we spotted the moose family grazing  there.

There were five of them all together, slowly mowing the pasture in the same manner as a herd of cows would. It was a remarkable sight!

A few days later I was wandering around our property and just inside our northern windbreak I found ungulate tracks in the snow. Looking a lot like a deer print, but much bigger, I decided they were moose tracks. Just then the magpies raised an alarm, I spied movement in the woods, and then the crack of branches breaking as something charged through the trees. I was relieved to see a few white tail deer exit the forest and bound off across the field, and I hoped it was me that had startled them, and not a moose!

Every time I step out my front door I think about the creatures that also call this land home: coyotes and the deer that eat my garden; stinky skunks and a lone weasel; rabbits that also eat my garden and tulip destroying crows; a family of moose!

It is only a matter of time before all of us have to adapt to the encroachment of the city, or move elsewhere. It will be harder for some than others.

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My Similar Moose Stories: Stories from the Pond

Moose on Parade

Weekly Photo Challenge: Down

I ran down the hallway to the office and discovered that the computer was down. That got me down so bad that I had to down a drink or two (of milk), then I curled up on the couch with my quilt made of down.

Down – what a versatile little word. It can be a preposition, adverb, adjective, verb or a noun. Did I achieve that in the sentence about the computer? Actually, I’m not sure.

For the Photo Challenge this week I’ve selected some special places with ‘Down’ view points. The American Southwest is home to many wonderful canyons, some that can be viewed from all along the rim.

The most famous is probably The Grand Canyon. On a scale of 1 to 10 for depth, width and wow value, this canyon is a 12!

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Another beautiful canyon is Bryce. Most people don’t visit the canyons in the winter, but I think they are most dramatic in a coat of snow.

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Our most recent Canyon experience was Canyon de Chelly. It happened to be raining that day, and that added a magical touch to the landscape.

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Canyon de Chelly is dramatic, but not so deep that we couldn’t watch tiny people and small vehicles navigating up and down the valley!

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My Similar Canyon story: Canyon de Chelly – another glimpse of this remarkable canyon.

It’s UnFriday!

Drat. I missed Clean Your Computer Day – it was February 13. Please forgive me for being four days late in telling you all about the latest cleaning tool in my arsenal. It is called Unning – from the verb un. I know you think that un has to be a prefix, but I think it has the potential to be a rather good verb. Under what circumstances, you ask?

Let me give you a few examples from the unning I did this week, while I was connected to three large Clouds:

- I had some Facebook acquaintances who, it turns out, aren’t really people I would choose to have as real life friends, so I decided I would unfriend them. But not yet – for now I’ve hid them – unfriending seems a bit harsh.
- I had about 200 Google RSS feeds that I never had time to read, so I unsubscribed to them.
- I  had about 250 WordPress Blog feeds that I also never had time to read, so I unfollowed them.

Collectively, all this unfriending, unsubscribing and unfollowing can simply be called unning. Of course, I expect I will be unned in return, but I don’t mind. We all have to do what we have to do.

Unning can be done to things too. I unned my clothes closet the other day and now I have a bag of good, unfashionable, used clothes to take to Goodwill. I unned the book shelf and collected a box of books for the book exchange. I unned the chocolate box and  picked out all the bars that were just past their best before date and I ate them.

Today is Friday, which is a fine day to do some unning, so I propose we call it UnFriday! I’m looking forward to hearing all your stories of how you used the day to unclutter your life!

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My Similar Cloud Story: Cloudy with a Chance of Pterodactyls - This has nothing to do with Cloud Computing but at the end of the story there is a link to a story about Cloud Computing

My Overworked Exclamation Mark!

I happen to like the Exclamation Mark. Most writers say it denotes strong feelings or even high volume (shouting), but to me it is just my preferred alternative to the lackluster presence of a period.

As an example, here is one of my recent comment replies.  I could have written it this way:
It will be unfortunate if all your flowers get frozen.
But I wrote it this way: It will be unfortunate if all your flowers get frozen!

I’m sure you understand that I wasn’t shouting when I used the exclamation mark. Did I have real strong feelings? Not really. I just thought that frozen flowers deserved more than a quiet period.

I am, of course, woefully mistaken in my use of the Exclamation Mark. Real writers have horrible things to say about people like me.

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.
Terry Pratchett

In the family of punctuation where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets over-excited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.
Lynn Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, pages 137-138

Lynn does, however, offer one faint hope that the exclamation mark won’t languish forever on the top left edge of the keyboard:

…it sometimes seems hurtful to suppress the exclamation mark when – after all – it doesn’t mean any harm to anyone, and is so desperately keen.
Lynn Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, p 139

What to do, what to do?  I suppose I could just invent a new punctuation mark – something less dull than a period, but not as robust as an explanation mark. Maybe a nice upright oval, slightly taller than a period.  I could call it an eggstol mark, perhaps.

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My Similar Egg Story: Weekly Photo Challenge: Simple

Valentine’s Day 2012

I don’t understand why Cupid was chosen to represent Valentine’s Day.  When I think about romance, the last thing on my mind is a short, chubby toddler coming at me with a weapon. 
Author Unknown

Happy Valentine’s Day, All! If it was spring time here, I’d shower you with tulips – but it is snowing, so I’ll just send you this pair of Parrot Tulips from last year.

Also left over from last year is my Valentine’s Day Story 2011, which was read by only 18 people. I thought it had some ingenious suggestions for gift giving, but you know that my ideas are sometimes so outside the box that I don’t even know what is in the box.

Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia.
Judith Viorst, Redbook, 1975