Keys Lost in the Snow

Five days straight of snow, five feet of it, and five degrees below. 5-5-5.

Charly kept a path clear and knocked the heavy powder from the windshield of his old Willys every day, yet snow was up to the wheels. Wearing his Sorel boots and a thick scarf doubled around his face, he rocked it from the deep snowbank the weather had set down around the vehicle.

He noticed moose tracks in the front yard near the bushes; moose always came down from the mountains when the snow was high. Charly couldn’t get his back door open from inside the house. It must be iced over; it’s on the windy side. He went out the front door and headed toward the back, high-stepping through the newly fallen and deep snow.

Looking up, all he saw were tumbling snowflakes dropping from gray clouds.

Suddenly, face to face with a cow moose, startled, he dropped his keys.

Nibbling alder branches, steam swirled from her nostrils. She bluff-charged him; he willed himself invisible beside the house, holding his breath. Then, ears flattened, she moved slowly into the backyard. Her long legs traversed in snow to her chest; she munched on his apple tree, pawing out a few frozen ones from the snow. Charly watched, aghast, as she leaped from a standstill, his six-foot fence into a thick stand of alder.

Charly’s admiration for her grew as he waded through waist-high snow, his thighs freezing, a shovel handle his tool to locate his keys.