Wild Life.

The Mister was driving home from work a few days ago, and although this has been the dreariest, coldest, rainiest spring this millenia, on this particular day it was very sunny. And the Mister was driving into the sun. (Stay with me, this gets relevant soon.)

He was driving on a fairly busy, four-lane artery, past the University, heading towards the bridge and the river. Way up ahead, the traffic had cleared, so he could see a fair ways up the road as it curved towards the west. And near the river, he could see something crossing the road that was alarmingly large and unusually shaped.

Now, Canada does have an abundance of wildlife, but not around here. We live in a city, in a pretty populated part of the world; we've had a black bear wander into town once, and there has been a cougar spotted not too far from here on more than one occasion. (And let's be clear, it's the actual "big cat" cougar, not a 40-year old woman on the make.) But polar bears, caribou and moose don't make an appearance around here.

(Once we went to the "Canadian Section" of the Toronto zoo, which required us to walk down a mile-long, 45° angle hill, only to see a few mangy bears, a resigned moose and one seriously pissed off raccoon. The moose was looking at me with an expression that could only mean "I know, right?". The bears were asleep, looking like nothing but some large, furry sofas and the raccoon was plotting his escape. Thing 1 was in a foul mood anyway, and the disgust on her face when she saw that raccoon made the Mister and I giggle for hours. "You made me walk all the way down here to see this??? I can see one of those eating out of the garbage pail in the breezeway any night of the week! Why don't they put a cat in there! " But the Japanese tourists were enthralled.)

The Mister was puzzled...it looked like a moose: it was big and brown, had 4 legs and was all big and broad at the top and sort of sloped down towards the back. Except....it didn't have a head. (If you think it's rare to see a moose in these parts, you can only imagine how extraordinarily unique a headless moose is.)

As the Mister drove up towards the river, and the angle of the sun changed, he was able to discern that what he thought was a headless moose was actually two guys moving a couch. The lead guy had it up on his shoulder, and the back guy was carrying it in front of him at waist level.

I wish it had been a headless moose. It would have been like the southwestern Ontario equivilent of a Sasquatch.