After a shower, my hair dryer seemed to be making a curious sound, a weird keening noise over and above the usual whine. I turned it off. The moaning grew louder, but now I could tell it was coming from behind my cabin: a hollow, eerie wailing echoing like an army of flying monkeys, and large full-throated monkeys with vocal training at that.
I ran to the back window.
I was afraid that someone might be in trouble.
I was especially afraid that it might be me.
Behind my cabin, down the slope of a ridge, something had erupted. But it wasn’t a volcano. It was a herd of elk. A host of the animals covered the hill, descending in slow motion like a lava field with a thousand legs. The village of Mammoth was being invaded.
I started to rush outside. But I decided to dress first.
By the time I bolted out the front door, a pair of elk was meandering down the street, wandering at ease from cabin to cabin, bush to bush, sampling the shrubbery.
From behind the cabin, the moaning grew in volume and frequency. I was surrounded. Elk can be dangerous, I had read, so I heeded the encapsulated wisdom of the pamphlets and stayed on the front step of the cabin, ready to move inside at any provocation.
The imperturbable pair strolled down the street with the cool of a Fifties biker gang coming in to roust the locals. As they reached my cabin, I moved just inside the door. One of them stopped and munched a bush by my front window. She looked directly at me, as if waiting for an invitation to tea. When the request wasn’t forthcoming, she soon moved on to other social opportunities. For wildlife, her manners were impeccable.
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