It's the size of the antlers

Part 1: City Mouse

The average male moose stands at about six feet at the shoulder. Some closer to seven. That's a huge animal. That's also not including the head or the antlers. Some people might picture a weird swamp donkey about the size of a horse or even a deer and those people would be in awe the first time they came across a moose in the wild for the first time. Vic was. Vic choked on his cereal. He had moved out to the country after the divorce. He needed to get away from the city that reminded him of his previous life. He needed to get away from their coffee shops, their bars, their restaurants, their mutual friends, their life. He didn't take the separation well and while some people would have seen the cracks in the foundation prior to the separation, Vic did not. It could have been wilful ignorance, but it still shocked his system when Alan told him he was moving out.

They had met in university and had been each other's first real boyfriends. Alan's parents had always had suspicions and welcomed Vic into their family with open arms. Vic's parent's, like Vic himself, were perpetually clueless and did not take it as well. He had never thought of them as small-minded, but they were born and raised in small towns and had that kind of brain. Alan being black felt like a one-two punch to his dad. This caused Vic to drift away from his parents, so when Alan left he felt like his whole world had been zapped by the Death Star. Vaporized. Blown to smithereens. Bits and pieces everywhere.

His boss at the ad agency knew he wasn't doing well. Vic worked as a graphic designer. He was a senior member in the office, so not only could he do his job somewhat remotely he also had some pull. He made a deal that he would make the hour and a half commute for weekly meetings every Friday and any other important meetings with clients in return for being able to work from home. Everybody in the office really liked Vic and just wanted to see him get back to his normal self. If that meant holing himself up in a new house in the middle of nowhere for a while then so be it.

Vic's new house that he bought with his half of the condo money was a quaint, pale blue bungalow with a long backyard that backed onto a forest. It was hidden from the main road, thanks to a long driveway and pretty remote altogether. The nearest neighbour could fire off a rifle and it would sound like bubble wrap popping in the distance. He had friends up now and then for dinner parties but he liked the solitude that it provided. The house was just outside of a small town that had all the basic amenities one would ever need so he didn't ever really go to the city unless he had to. The town had been a big deal up until the 50's when it suffered some sort of disaster that everybody outside of the town had long forgotten about. Now it sat silent and semi-deserted. It looked like one of those fake communities built for nuclear testing purposes during the Cold War. Vic liked that it felt frozen in time because he wished he could freeze everything in his own life and take a breather.

The new house was nice. The kitchen had nice big windows, a nice breakfast nook and a nice sliding door out onto a nice deck. At the far end of the yard was a tall four by four post that acted as the perch for a birdhouse. It was mid-summer and he would eat breakfast at the small round kitchen table and look for birds as he slurped down his cereal. It started when he noticed a couple of cardinals and he began keeping a pen, a birding guide and a pair of binoculars in the middle of the circular table. He would add little stars next to the illustration of every bird he saw. Magpies, Blue Jays, Orioles, Red-Wing Blackbirds. He felt like he was in the jungle after having lived surrounded by concrete and glass for so long.

The first time Vic saw a moose he dropped his spoon into the bowl and it splashed almond milk onto the screen of his phone. He did a real life spit take and Fruit Loop shrapnel coated his birding notes. Moose are not common in these parts, but they're not completely unheard of either. He had seen a couple deer skip through his yard before and thought that was awesome. He read in the local paper that a black bear had been spotted and thought that was a little scary. This moose was a whole other ball game. A different sport. It was so big he felt like he was looking at a dinosaur. He assumed it was male because it had antlers. It's the size of the antlers that really made his eyes widen. They were like two satellite dishes made of driftwood. When the moose passed the birdhouse the antlers nearly reached its roof. What was that, like, 10 feet? Vic made an educated guess.