Lions and Tigers and Bears, OH MY!!!!

Ok, so there weren't any lions, or tigers, or bears, but there were a couple of moose!! So one lazy Sunday afternoon, Brad and I are taking a nap (and by taking a nap I mean Brad trying to sleep and me pestering him about how we are wasting our day and me poking him and prying open his eyelids and such) and we hear all of this commotion outside. We then walk out of our apartment in our little apartment complex (apartment complex: A location. A social or grouping of apartments with similar names and a joint parking lot. A place where the apartments like to gather and the humans living in them get to learn to tolerate and sometimes enjoy the close proximity while the owner of said apartment complex makes exponentially increasing amounts of cash while never once repairing said complex or being available by telephone.) and we notice that we have a couple of visitors. They are actually hanging out right behind Brad and mine apartment in the little playground. Well, since this is Rexburg, and it was a Sunday afternoon, the entire complex was standing in our little lawn taking pictures and calling animal control. The funny thing was that everyone was arguing about how old said moose were and if it was a mom and a baby and how big of a gun everyone had so they could shoot them. All the women were talking about how cute they were and all of the men were giving hunting stories (some of which seemed a little sketch to me) and talking about who had the biggest gun. Brad and I just laughed and enjoyed hearing all of these people who clearly have never really been around anything like this before. (We are both from Montana so we do know a little about stuff like this). 

 I guess when they first ran into our complex, they ran into a car (the owners of the car had purchased it two days ago) but they didn't do any damage to it. The moose is walking next to our car, The Prune, as we like to call it. 

 After a while of watching the moose wander around, Brad decided to get back to that nap he was trying to take before we had to head out to a little Sunday goodbye dinner at the park. As we got ready to go, we walked out our door and there the moose were. Just waiting for us. And since Brad and I are from MT, we knew better then to try to just walk past them to our car. Also, we just wanted to watch them and get as close as we could. The funny thing is our next door neighbors were stuck on the other side of the parking lot and we were stuck in our apartment. 

 Looks like this moose has a liking for Coke and black shoes. 

 I wanted to try to give this moose a muffin since I loved that book growing up and it is the name sake for our blog but I am not Suzy homemaker and didn't have pan fulls of fresh hot muffins just laying around in case a moose happened to walk by. Now I know better.  

 I know you can only see my head and eyebrows in this picture but we were trying to show you how close they actually got. I got even closer, but Brad was too busy telling me I better not take another step and to get  back closer to the door to take a picture.Good husband.  

 Again, recap. Sunday afternoon. So just about every cop and Sheriff in this great growing metropolis was at our complex getting ready for the catching of the moose. I'm sure everyone driving by (because the moose at this point were no longer visible to the road) were thinking we had a major drug bust or something along those lines. They could read all about it in the paper the next day.  

 They tranquilized them and let the officers do their thing while the animal control people got the trailer ready. 

 They even let a couple of regular, non-uniformed people help lift the moose into the trailer. 

 Ok, I know you can't see a thing but I had to prove that I got to pet the moose. I am the one in the middle, you might be able to make out my hair line and sunglasses. After they got both the moose loaded, they let anyone who wanted to hop into the trailer and pet them. We had to hurry though because the tranquilizer doesn't last long and they were worried about stressing the poor things out.  

Fun facts: So since there hasn't been a ton of rain, the moose were drawn to our little neighborhood because we have a nature park just down the street and it has a little duck pond. They think the moose were coming for the water. Both moose were probably around a year in age and had probably just left mom and were on their own for the first time. Rough first day if you ask me. We had to hose them off with water as soon as we caught them because in combination with the drugs, the heat, and the stress, animal control were really worried about them over heating. Moose hair feels like a horses main or tail. Moose smell bad when wet. Don't wear flip flops while chasing moose. Don't chase moose. Period. Moose kick out and attack with their front legs. My Grandpa Recht told me it is better to run into a mother bear then a mother moose. We did, in fact, make it to our Sunday dinner.