Mavis the mangy moose

Mavis, the mangy moose with a gimpy leg has been hanging around our place this spring.  She has appeared in the trees by the kitchen and peeked in the bedroom window.  She isn't very photogenic with her mangy coat and limp.  She favours the rear left leg, shifting her weight to her other three legs and lifting the injured one off the ground slightly as she grazes on the Saskatoon bushes.  Turning to find new shoots to nibble on she stumbles briefly struggling to get the three good legs into a solid tripod again.  We have watched Mavis on at least five separate occasions in the last couple of months.  We know it's her because of that leg.

Mavis 2018! See that back leg?
I'm rooting for Mavis to survive and the leg to heal, but damn that moose she likes to live on the edge.  Not only is she scaring the bejeebers out of me by looking in the windows, twice in the last two weeks she has run in front of my vehicle.  The first time, I saw the moose in the ditch and had plenty of time to slow down and watch it meander across the country road.  It was Mavis.  She crossed right in front of me and managed to get herself over the barbed wire fence, gimpy leg and all.  It all happened in slow motion, without panic on my part.  There was no pounding heart.  The oncoming traffic saw her well in advance and stopped.  Mavis put on her own little moose parade for us and crossed the road like a diva dragging that sore leg behind her. Even a mangy, damaged diva can stop traffic if she crosses the road with attitude.

Mavis surprising me 2018
I had one close encounter with a moose that week, I wasn't expecting another especially with the same moose.  It was late morning and I was on my way back to the office from a meeting with a jumble of thought threads passing by.  There were no big revelations, just stray stuff about spring in the countryside.  Until one thought popped up like a neon sign, wildlife.  I was being rather complacent on that drive until the universe tapped me on the shoulder, or God yelled in my ear.  Wildlife!

 Yes, I do believe my thought wasn't random, it was a warning.  Wildlife?  The ditches, look in the ditches.  A nano-second is all it took for those thoughts to register and for a moose to emerge from the willows on the passenger side.  There was not a lot of runway between us.  It was running across the secondary road and I was cruising about eighty kilometres an hour.  Eloquence disappeared in direction proportion to the intensity of adrenalin that hit me.  Holy shit came out of my mouth as I hit the brake full force.  My seat-belt did its job and grabbed me.  My bag and all its contents hit the floor.

It was Mavis again.  She looked through the windshield at me as she ran across.  It was as though she was a surprised to see me as I was to see her.  I think I left skid marks on the road that day, but Mavis made it safely across.  I sat there for a moment, at a complete stop trying to  catch my breath.  She pulled herself over the fence on the other side, her sore leg fully visible to me from my extremely close vantage point.  Sitting there shaking from the adrenalin, I wondered how it was that I hadn't hit her.  I believe it was the voice, or the tap on the shoulder, or the smack up the side of my head that saved us both.  You know the God thing.
I drive that road daily sometimes multiple times in the same day without hearing voices or feeling taps on my shoulder.  My family is probably very relieved to hear that.  But that day was different.  My close encounter with Mavis the mangy moose set me to pondering on nudges from the universe.  What other nudges was I getting that I was missing?   I think we get nudges all the time but I'm often going too fast and not paying attention.  It took Mavis running in front of me and shaking me up to get my attention.  Just a note to God.  You don't need to make Mavis run in front of me anymore, I'm listening.  How about you, are you listening?  Is there a Mavis the mangy moose trying to get your attention?

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