Lee Thomson

I have no fabric for today, it was filled, pretty happily, with other things. Instead I have a story.

I went to ride the Canadian horses I ride for Bob and Leonor, two towns over. They are up in the hills to the east of Amherst, with woods all around, and streams, high from the melt, coursing and trickling through the woods. It was a gorgeous day, and I convinced Bob to come with me. He took Penny, who is large and will be five this summer, and I rode Ruby who is much smaller, and will be four this summer. We started off up the road, and into the woods. We were trotting along, hopping over downed logs, when Ruby stopped abruptly. He eyes bugged out, and her nose was twitching, and her ears were semaphoring around and she was quivering all over. Penny kind of rammed into us from behind, and then she caught wind of what-ever-it-was too, and the pair of them stood rooted to the spot. Bob and I looked and finally saw what had their attention.

Two moose. One very large, about the size of Penny (whose back is up to my eyebrows) and dark and glossy and pretty clearly pregnant. The other was not much shorter, but looked unprepossessing. If it had been human, its shoes would have been untied, and shirt tails sticking out and sporting a severe case of bed-head. Bob and the horses and I watched them move out ahead of us, then cut across the trail and head up the hill, at a low headed, shambling trot. The horses remained rooted to the spot. They wouldn't move without strong encouragement for the next .25 mile, and after that Ruby kept scanning the underbrush for any further moose that might leap out at her, all the way home.

That was a pretty gratifying way to start the morning.