A little story...

I just wrote a nice Thanksgiving post and then remembered I had a story to share with everyone about something exciting that happened to us on Monday.  So...that first and then I'll get to Thanksgiving.

On Monday night around midnight, Andy and I were woken up by a loud THUD.  We were both asleep and a bit disoriented - I had no idea where it was coming from, just somewhere outside the bedroom.  Of course I made Andy go check it out because I'm pretty sure it was in our wedding vows that he has to go check out scary noises in the middle of the night and that if there's an axe murderer in the house, he's the first victim.  I'm all about thinking ahead.

Andy headed toward the front door, where the thudding seemed to be coming from.  After standing by the door for a few moments, he came to get me (I thought because he was having second thoughts about that whole "I have to be the first one killed by the axe murderer" thing) and told me I needed to look outside.

I crept up to the door and peeked outside and was confronted by a GIANT MOOSE ASS on the porch. That's right, there was a full grown female moose basically knocking on our door.  (I am so sorry I don't have a picture for you.  It was all at once terrifying, awesome and hilarious).

We suddenly realized that she had come looking for food and decided that our pumpkins (which were still totally okay and festive even though it was a month after Halloween because gourds = Thanksgiving), even if frozen, would be something delicious to eat.  Lady moose was going to town on the pumpkins - knocking them on the deck, kicking them around, biting them.  We sat and watched her for a good fifteen minutes before our brave guard dog FINALLY got out of bed and rushed to our aid. Since his barking wasn't deterring her from mangling the pumpkins and it was mostly just stressing him out, we went back to bed and decided to assess the damage in the morning.

THIS I have pictures of:

She did the best with the one she wedged under the bench.  This pumpkin was frozen solid and she managed to eat about half of it.  Good girl.

She put the little gourds in her mouth - ate a couple whole - but decided the green one wasn't very tasty.

So that's my exciting story.  We figured a sound like that in the middle of the night had to be one of three things:  the aforementioned axe murderer, a bear, or a moose.  I think we got the best possible deal.  Also, file this one under "only in Alaska."

And, in case you are wondering, we didn't throw the pumpkins away, we tossed them in a brush heap we have in the back yard.  If anyone official comes asking, we're not feeding the moose, we're composting, and if the moose come by and eat them, so be it.