An Amendment

In my back-to-blogging post a few days ago, the number one thing on my list was basically that a city is a city is a city. Well, I stand corrected. Last night as we sat at the table chatting after dinner, I uttered the following phrase, "Holy moose in our backyard!" because - you guessed it - moose (2!) in the backyard. WELCOME TO ALASKA!

Let me clarify a couple things about our yard:
1. It's not big. It's a nice wooden deck that ends where the foresty part starts, the forest runs another 15-20 feet back and then it drops off at a pretty steep angle. There's not a lot of yard to speak of.

2. These moose just appeared out of nowhere. Apparently they can scale pretty steep angles without issue because they ate off our trees, wandered toward the neighbors and disappeared right back down that slope. No big deal if you're a moose.

Now for proof:

Baby on the left, Mom is in the center of the picture but a little harder to see.
There's no zoom on this picture.

This the view from Natalie's room upstairs. Again, no zoom. Just a moose, eating our tree.

Off they go...

It would be a ridiculous lie to tell you I was calm. I was nothing of the sort because a few things were going through my mind,  namely that a mama moose with a baby is dangerous and that Natalie had spent at least 30 minutes out there playing in what's left of the snow yesterday afternoon. I just kept an eye on her from inside, but I wasn't out there with her. Needless to say we've now had a few conversations about moose safety and what to do if they show up again. It also reaffirmed my fear that if I ever see a bear in nature, it will eat me because I'll be passed out on the ground. Now who wants to come visit?