Thursday, December 1, 2011

Moose tracks means Moose nearby... right?

I was woken to the urgent news that if I love my dogs (and you know I do!) I should get up RIGHT NOW and take them for a walk before the rain starts!!! 

Um... okay... Give me that cup of coffee and I'll wake up and give that idea some thought. No no no... Get up NOW and take the dogs for a walk because we're expecting the equivalent of 1 1/2 feet of snow in rainfall form. 

Well, that's a lotta rain, which means a whole lotta wet. I've got the day off my part-time job. All I have on my agenda is cooking supper and working on my drawing commissions (a shih tzu and a pair of pit bulls). 

SURE! I'll go for a walk with my little guys! 

Dress, feed dogs, finish coffee, bundle up for the (WOW!) wind. 

Cell phone in my pocket. Check. 
Dog leash for just in case. Check.
Kleenex in one pocket for blowing my nose. Check (hey, it's important!!)

Aaaaand away we go down the road towards the Father Troy Trail. 

Whew, it must've been kinda wet lately, because that spot between the 2nd and 3rd set of stairs that the East Coast Trails Association had built in 2010 is Muuudy. 

The disgusting bit of land below Mr. Tapper's dump pile is as disgusting as ever. Muddy and slimy. Somewhat stinky. C'mon dogs... let's keep going.

Down the stairs to Tapper's Cove. Across the crumbling dock. Up the stairs past Tapper's Cove. *huff puff* ... it's been a while and I'm a bit out of condition for climbing such steep stairs!!!

Moving along to what we call "Perspiration Point" because by this time we're sweating. It's the turn at the end of Torbay Bight, just before the cows. Keep going... 

The dogs are racing up and down the hillside beside me. Lagging behind, catching up. Racing ahead, racing back. Up and down. Down and up. They're happy. Their tails are wagging and their tongues are lolling.

Ooooh... lookie here! Hoof prints. Cow? No... can't be. There's only one set. Hmmm... I'm no country girl, but I'm a-thinking it's moose prints. Cool! A moose wuz here sometime this morning. Look at how he slipped and slid along the trail! Wow! I can see where his toes dug into the ground as he must've jumped a bit. Oh! He slipped again... look at that skid mark!

I get to the part of the trail where somebody has kindly placed six wooden pallets to get across a particularly gross and disgusting part of the trail. I look ahead while framing my iPhoto camera and notice something moving waaay ahead of me. 

It's a moose's arse. Um... where there's moose's arse, there's the rest of the moose. Right? Right!!! 

Turn around, call the dogs, move it on OUTTA there ASAP!!!! 

I had a relatively uneventful trek back home, but I kept turning around to see if the moose I'd been inadvertently following was purposefully following Me!

Luckily, not. 


Wake up call

Wake up call
Sunrise over Torbay