Canada Moose's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Canada Moose wanted to be the greatest animal in the forest, second only to the grizzly bear. That was hard to remember with his head stuck in an oak tree. His left antler had hooked a low branch of the broad oak that marked the thickest stretch of brush. His right antler was tangled in a vine. He wore his red and white scarf and the Canadian-made jacket that had carried him through three winters, including the January blizzard that almost killed him. The jacket was fine. The antlers were the problem. He pulled. The branch bent. The branch did not break. A porcupine sat on a root four feet away and watched. Behind the porcupine, a cougar lay on a flat stone, tail twitching, eyes half closed. Past the cougar stood a small wooden house grown into the trunks of three trees, its windows full of mushrooms and flowers. Smaller animals leaned from the windows. A squirrel laughed. A rabbit covered its mouth. Canada Moose felt his ears burn under the scarf. "I am fine," he announced. He yanked his head sideways. Leaves fell on his nose. The porcupine sneezed. The cougar opened one yellow eye, looked at him for a long second, and closed it again. That was worse than the laughing. Canada Moose tried backing up. The vine tightened. He tried lowering his head. The branch scraped down his skull and caught harder. He stood there breathing, antlers pinned, while a chipmunk climbed onto his shoulder to get a better view. He stopped fighting. He thought about the grizzly, who would simply walk through this brush and crush it. He could not be the grizzly. He could be smarter than a branch. He folded his front legs, knelt in the dirt, and let his head drop low. The antlers slid free of the vine. He shuffled forward on his knees until the oak branch lifted clear. Then he stood. The chipmunk fell off. The porcupine blinked. The cougar did not open her eye, but her tail stopped twitching. Canada Moose walked out of the brush on his own four hooves, scarf crooked, jacket dusted with bark. He had escaped. He had also knelt in front of every animal in the clearing, and they had all seen it. Somewhere behind him, a small voice in the tree house said, "Do it again." He kept walking. He needed a plan that did not involve kneeling.