The Moose in the Yard

Bram was eating cereal when he saw it.

Something big. Something brown. Something standing right in the middle of the yard.

"Mama," he whispered. "Mama, mama, mama."

His mama came to the window. She stopped. She didn't say anything for a long, long time.

Then she said, very quietly, "Well."

It was a moose.

Not a picture-book moose. Not a cartoon moose. A real moose, standing in their yard in the blue morning snow, and it was the biggest thing Bram had ever seen that wasn't a building.

Its legs were long as fence posts. Its body was wide as the couch. Its antlers spread out like two huge brown hands reaching for the sky.

"Don't move," Mama whispered.

Bram didn't move.

The moose didn't move either.

Nobody moved.

Then the moose dipped its big, big head down, down, down — and bit the top right off the snowman.

The carrot nose. Gone. The stick arms. Gone. The nice round head Papa had packed so carefully last Sunday — just gone, in one big crunchy moose-mouth bite.

"He ate our snowman," Bram whispered.

"He sure did," said Mama.

Papa came down the stairs in his socks. He was yawning. He had his coffee. He walked right past the window, then stopped. He walked backward. He looked out.

His coffee stayed in the air, halfway to his mouth, and just — stayed there.

"Is that—"

"Yep," said Mama.

"In our—"

"Yep," said Mama.

Papa set his coffee down very slowly, like even the clink of a mug might break something.

All three of them stood at the window. Bram in front. Mama and Papa behind, their hands on his shoulders. Nobody talked. The house was so quiet Bram could hear the clock on the wall.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The moose chewed. Slow and easy. Like it had all the time in the whole world. Like maybe it had never hurried once in its whole moose life.

Steam came from its nose in soft white clouds.

Bram breathed on the window. A foggy circle appeared on the glass. He drew a little moose in it with his finger — two lines for legs, a bump for a nose.

The fog shrank. The little moose disappeared.

The big moose stayed.

It stayed for a long time. It ate the rest of the snowman — the middle part, the scarf and all. It ate some branches off the little birch tree. It stood and looked at nothing.

Bram's legs got tired from standing. He sat on the floor by the heating vent where warm air hummed against his pajamas. He could still see the moose's legs through the bottom of the window. Four dark posts in the snow.

"Will it stay forever?" Bram asked.

"No," Papa said softly. "It'll go when it's ready."

And then, just like that, the moose turned. It walked across the yard, slow and heavy, each big hoof punching a hole in the snow. It stepped over the fence like the fence was nothing. Like the fence was a toy. It walked into the dark trees and the dark trees swallowed it up, and then the yard was just a yard again.

Except for the holes in the snow. Four-print, four-print, four-print, all the way to the fence.

And except for the snowman, which wasn't a snowman anymore. Just a lumpy pile with a chewed-up scarf on top.

Bram pressed his whole face against the cold window. His nose went flat. His breath made fog again.

"Can we build a new snowman?" he asked.

Mama was already getting his boots.

And outside, in the snow, in the early morning light, Bram packed the first ball himself — and this time, he used two carrots.

Just in case the moose came back.