Moose Mania!! Or, Better Living Through Huge Ungainly Animals With Coatracks on Their Heads.

Note: Is it just me, or is there something sort of Christmassy about mooses?

Moose MANIA!

Here is the website that will solve all of your problems. 
-All of your problems that are moose-related, that is. And I believe that, until we find the courage to look inside ourselves with forthright honesty, we can't know how many moose related issues we really have.

http://www.moosefarm.newmail.ru/

If you go to the site and click on "English translations", you will find a plethora of humorous and/or alarming quotes. It reads like they took the original Russian text to a bargain basement version of "Google Translate": something offline, in St. Petersburg, where people in a dark basement crouch over their typewriters, translating madly. And I do mean "madly". "Vlad's 24 Hour Translation, Transcription and Pierogies". It's filled with smoke, the the sound of keys tap-tap-tapping, and a distinct smell of cabbage soup. 

Here are some quotes from this site:

On "Adopting Your Very Own Moose":

"The more contacts between people and [moose] calves, the more communicable and companionable will moose grow up."

(Note: This is important. You don't want a sullen and uncommunicative moose around the house. Trust me on this.)

Under "Moose In History":

"Swedish army had moose troops, but only until real battles. Moose turned out to be wiser then their knights, they left battlefield to hide in the nearest forest if danger occured."

Well, finally! At last, the shocking truth about Swedish Moose Cowardice can be revealed!

And this:

" Most moose spend their daytime in the forest, and their encounter with a tourist group is a happy chance." 

It doesn't say who would be "happy" about an accidental moose encounter in a brooding Russian forest: the tourists? The mooses? The onlookers, watching in happy schaedenfraude, from the bushes?

The next quote just sounds like a mother talking about her teenaged kids.

My opinion is: it is necessary to release  young animals in mid-summer. I believe they will return to eat oatmeal or to hide from gnats in a dark shed. Radio tags will help to control their movements.

-Or maybe that's more about my childhood than you need to know.

The thing about anyone being wildly- even irrationally- excited about ANYthing, is that it's catching. Five minutes on this site had me seriously thinking about how a baby moose (mooseling? mooselet?) would get on with my cat, Princess Love Supreme Superstar: a baby moose weighs about 85 pounds, while Princess clocks in at a ladylike,if hefty, 13 pounds.
The answer is, of course, my little Bed-Stuy Princess would totally kick her some baby-moose ass. Sad but true.

Still, I long to ride mooseback (as the site suggests) -perhaps through Prospect Park-....to use moose milk (as the site suggests) to miraculously restore my "flagging and weakly constitution" (how did they know?).. and, most of all, I wish for a weeklong stay in the site's vaunted. Moose Sanitarium! This is a real place, according to the site. I think they mean "saniTORium", which is a place you go to have your physical health restored, as opposed to a "saniTARium", which is a place where one puts either crazy people, or freeloading Japanese artists.

Perhaps they actually MEAN "Moose Sanitarium". Maybe this is where mooses go who think they are Napoleon, or Jesus Christ, or,a bit pathetically, gazelles. The mental picture of a moose dressed up as Napoleon, is kind of appealing, in a "Bullwinkle the Moose" cartoon sort of way.(And, with it's implied low throaty purr, and almost complete lack of possessive articles, the entire site sounds like it was dictated by "Bullwinkle"'s glamourous Russian Spy, Natasha.It says that fifty people can stay at one time, in the sanitorium, although it's quiet about how many moose are involved. The people have their health restored. By moose.

Worryingly, there are no specifics about how, exactly, this occurs.

So join me! We will canter merrily through Cantral Park on our noble moose steeds. We will all be dressed as Napoleon- you, me and the mooses. We will laugh merrily, to know that our flagging, weakly constitutions are being restored, that sullen teenaged mooses will be waiting for us in dark, gnat free barns,with oatmeal: and that possibly, just possibly, we will have chance encounters with tourists!! 

A happy day indeed.

Or, just another day in New York City.