The Moose Stories

"Mama, mama!" Little feet pounding across the house, and then her small face buried in my knees. "A moose is comin'!"

Her fears are gathered and expressed in the body of an imaginary moose. A "big big moose that will bite me!" she tells us. Being gnawed on by a certain child at school hasn't helped things. Her fantasy life, though, is an incredible coping mechanism. We're fascinated.

Last night, mama and Nora ate dinner with a moose and a dinosaur. "A nice moose, mama. He does not bite." The moose sat at the head of the table, the dinosaur just across from Nora. When daddy came home, he'd have to sit on mama's lap, Nora said.

Sometimes, she hears "a moose comin'" and screws up her little face, working it out. "It's a tiny, tiny, tiny, TINY moose, mama. It does not bite. No. It's just a tiny tiny teeny baby baby moose."

This'll be the year of the moose, then. Mama has mooses of her own, sometimes big and biting, sometimes forcefully shrunken down to squeaking little things with antlers no bigger than a soup spoon.

As narrated to us from the backseat of the car this weekend:

When I was riding my pony on Wednesday, I heard a funny funny noise on the landing. It was a moose! When the pony was galloping through the forest, I saw a tiny moose riding on my pony, with me, on Wednesday. And I laughed because a tiny moose was riding on my pony with me! And I laughed and laughed and laughed! A moose was on my pony! Yeah. I was looking around, and a bird was on my pony with the moose. Yeah! And I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.