Munching on Willows

    It has been a while since we've seen a moose!

   This morning, while filling the kettle at the kitchen sink, I glanced out the window into the alleyway.  For a moment, my mind tried to make sense out of a bizarre image: that of a large dog climbing a tree!  Things clicked into place when the "dog" moved forward and I saw the rest of the body.  The "dog" was actually the head of the moose, bobbing up and down as it stripped new shoots off willow trees at the back of a property three or four doors up from ours. 

   She remained there about half an hour, quietly munching on the trees.  She appears in pretty good shape, from what we could tell, aside from a round wound on her shoulder, visible in these pictures.  I had hoped she would wander down the alley closer to our house, as there are short willows in the strip of land between our back fence and the alley.  Instead, she walked directly across the alley and onto another property.  (Neither of those properties had back fences.)   I keep checking to see if she has returned to the alley, but I think she instead might have walked to the front of the second property and right out their driveway onto the street.

   Pictures taken through our open kitchen window with my little camera on full zoom!  Click to enlarge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 UPDATE

   At 4:45pm, I placed something in the kitchen sink and looked out the window...just in time to see the moose slowly walking out from the property she wandered into earlier this morning.  She must have had a snooze for the afternoon in their yard!  She is back to munching on trees in the alley.  I hope she has another snooze and doesn't try to make her way back to the edge of town until later tonight, when it's dark.