We feed our birds sunflower seed chips. This food is high in energy content and low in handling time. They need that when it’s really cold out and the days are short (on 21 December we have 3 hours and 41 minutes between sunrise and sunset).

Our bird feeder hangs from a flower pot bracket up against the outside wall by the kitchen table window so we can watch the activity. It’s a busy place all winter long, with Black-capped and Boreal chickadees, Hairy and Downy woodpeckers, a Red-breasted Nuthatch or two, a red squirrel (day squirrel), and a northern flying squirrel (night squirrel). This winter we have had no redpolls, which is highly unusual. It’s only the second time this has happened in 23 years, and it coincides with a failure in the birch seed crop.

We’ve had a pretty cold winter, with an average temperature in January of -21º F and a 90-day average (14 Dec – 12 March) of -13.1º F. This tends to bring the moose up into the hills from the lowlands, because it’s a little warmer up here, often ten degrees or more. And, sure enough, we soon had a moose in the neighborhood—a lone female. We’d see her from time to time meandering around eating tasty sticks.

One dark, cold night after we’d gone to bed, I heard the feeder thump against the outer wall. The night squirrel does this often, making one or two taps as the feeder swings with the animal’s arrival or departure. But this one was repeating and not stopping. That’s unusual. We’ve only heard it once or twice before.

I hopped up and went downstairs and turned on the outside light. And there on the kitchen window blinds was the biggest, hairiest shadow I’ve ever seen. The kind of thing nightmares are made of. The feeder thumper was not trying to hide.

And so I found myself outside at -30º F in bathrobe and slippers trying to shoo off a very large moose who was not scared of me at all. I grabbed the push broom from where it leans out on the porch and waggled it at her, but she only backed off a few steps and then pointedly stood there staring at me, waiting for me to leave so she could resume her tasty snack.

Good god that steel broom handle was cold. My enthusiasm for this standoff waned a lot faster than hers did, so I took the feeder down from its hanger and brought it inside with me. The next morning Rose and I had a chuckle over the night’s events. At least we knew that the new deck boards could hold up a moose. I hung the feeder back up well before sunrise for its day job.

This moose did not go away. They usually do, but that taste of moose candy must have made quite an impression. She’s been in the neighborhood for months now and often in our yard. We have great snow for tracking, so we can see all her movements. A regular neighbor like this needs a name. Hers is now Gertrude.

We’ve had to shoo her off the feeder a couple more times. One weekend day Rose heard a noise that sounded loud and close and when she looked out the upstairs window there was a big, hairy back right up against the house with the snout end in the feeder. Another dark evening we were sitting in the living room quietly reading when we heard giant crunching footsteps on the deck. “She’s baaaaack!” Both times we put the feeder in the garage until she got bored and left.

I’ve considered hanging the feeder in a different way so she can’t reach it. But that would cut off the night squirrel. Suboptimal. By accident we’ve discovered a trick that seems to work: Keep the deck swept clean of snow. She will walk right up to the bare brown boards and not step another foot onto them. Weird.

One day while I was out snowshoeing in the woods out back she meandered around avoiding and re-encountering me as we both used the winding snowshoe trail to go about our business. It’s odd how moose seem to try to hide behind trees. I suppose hiding like 5% of your massive body is something, but not really. It sure looks funny.

But then I think back to me brandishing a push broom in bathrobe and slippers and her just staring at me with a clear look in her eye: “You sure look like an idiot.” Yep.