The Wannabe Animal Whisperer

I went through quite a few animal “phases” growing up.

Like many other little girls, I most definitely went through a horse phase. When my family moved from Buffalo, NY, to Reno, NV, I was adamant that every little girl in Nevada had to own a horse. It was a fact. It was the wild west after all! If I’m remembering correctly I insisted that this was the case for at least five or six years, which must have left my parents asking themselves where I got this stuff. I failed to recognize that none of my other friends had horses, but I was convinced that they were just hidden in some deep reach of their backyard.

I also went through a dolphin and whale phase. We vacationed in San Diego every summer and I had daydreams about happening upon a dolphin out in the waves and, obviously, making friends with it (of course I spoke dolphin).

For some reason I also went through a wolf phase. I loved wolves, maybe because I wanted a puppy so badly. I read tons of young adult literature about wolves (anybody else read the Julie of the Wolves series by Jean Craighead George?) and, once again, daydreamed about meeting one in the wild and becoming its best friend.

The place where you can see my brothers’ and my animal phases the most clearly is on our family Christmas tree every holiday season. Every year each of us has always been gifted an ornament for us to add to our collection. Growing up, these ornaments often represented whatever phase we were going through at that time. Brian and Kyle’s ornaments are pretty consistent. Brian has loved buffaloes ever since he knew what a buffalo was. Kyle shares a similar love for elephants, and most of his ornaments reflect that. It’s my ornaments that are all over the place. Dolphins, wolves, horses, and bears, amongst others and, for some reason, moose.

Moose were another phase of mine. I always thought they were adorable. Being a tall and gangly kid, maybe it was that my adolescent self felt like they had a similar lumbering kind of gait or clumsy demeanor (who really know what goes through the mind of a preteen girl who is 5’11” tall in the fifth grade?). Regardless, I thought, and still think, that moose are pretty incredible creatures.

Back on July 15th, I had an article posted with Your Boulder about moose in Boulder County. They’re very prevalent in the area and, as the population grows, people are seeing more and more of them across the county. To read a little bit about the history of moose in Boulder County and instances when they’ve showed up in the news recently (can you imagine seeing a moose just strolling down Pearl Street Mall?) head to my article, “Boulder County Moose Tales,” here.

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