Pecked to death by ducks by Tim Cahill Page A

moose were feeding. The moose and the color on the pond: It had all seemed a once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunity. We thought Tom and Lee might want to seize the moment, so Karen had gone to get them. Now, for perhaps twenty minutes, I had been alone with the moose, and that was my moment.
    I edged closer—it seemed smart to move only during those times when both moose had their heads under water—and eventually found myself standing at the edge of the pond, perhaps thirty feet away from the larger bull. He broke water and stared at me. I took a few pictures. The animal seemed alert: He wasn't disturbed by my presence, and he wasn't ignoring me, either. There was a sense of immense power here, and my heart began thumping hard inside my chest. I felt suddenly weak, impotent— and stupid for being so close. The two moose, huge and sleek, fed in a pond that reflected the sunset, and I didn't think about their intelligence at all. I suppose a clinical psychologist could run a few moose through some sort of giant maze and give you a reading on their IQs—"These guys are dumber than a sackful of hammers"—but the sort of intelligence that could be measured wasn't at issue here. The moose seemed another order of life altogether.
    There was, of course, a chance they would charge. I had

    planned it all out, the worst-case scenario. The pond was surely muddy, and when the moose moved, they had to pull their legs out of the ooze with a gesture that would cost them some effort. The tree I was standing behind was stout, with several low, step-ladder-type branches. I could get up the tree before the moose could get out of the pond.
    Besides, I knew there would be a signal. A moose will likely bristle at the neck, like a hissing cat, before it charges. I had seen this once when, driving in Yellowstone, my skiing partners and I stopped the car to let a moose cross the road. It was cold, and the snow was deep. The moose wanted to walk on the plowed road, and it wanted to walk in our direction. We were in a small Japanese car. This was an American moose. The ruff around its neck stood on end, and it came toward us in the strange, gangling walk that makes moose look so ridiculously uncoordinated. A great hoof, the size of a pie plate, came down toward the window on the driver's side, and we took immediate evasive action. Several hours later, when we tried the road again, the moose was gone.
    Once again I decided on evasive action, moving back into the darkness of the trees as Tom and Lee moved in for some pictures of their own.

The moose grazed for another twenty minutes. Tom and Lee shot a few rolls of film, and I sat on a log thinking. This time we were spending, it was a moment of special beauty, with the spice of small but certain danger to it. Some prize such a moment because it gives them a sense of superiority: others are such fools, none of them give bears enough credit for fishing. It's a poor treasure, though, this spiteful superiority. These moments are the currency of our physical and emotional lives. They are what we tell our friends about in the art that comes to each of us. We write or we paint or we tell stories. Photographers prize the moment for the shot. And I don't know why I prize the moment at all, except that there is little enough left in our lives to awe us.

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    I was leading, walking past some nameless pond in Montana's Mission Wilderness, when Pancho began humming. At first, the sound could be taken for the gentle creaking of a wooden ship at anchor.
    "Uhmmmm."
    It was almost a sigh. Pancho might have been saying, "Ca-ramba, this pond is a loveliness, no?"
    "Uhmmmm."
    The sound was a little louder now, a little more nasal. I turned, and Pancho gave me one of his patented llama looks. His head was precisely on a level with my own, and his face was strangely angular under the ridiculous rabbit ears. Pancho's eyes were flat brown from lid to lid. He looked like something sentient from another