I'm going to jot down the following story so that it will live on should my memory fail.


Long about 1993 or 1994, a Female Companion and I were swimming in Little Black Creek, just south of Hattiesburg, Mississippi (near Wiggins, if I recall and you care). Said Female Companion and I knew one another Biblically, and so swimming in an isolated bit of creek in the Mississippi summer turned our thoughts, naturally, to nudity and carnal behavior.

We were working towards sullying the creek with our love juices when, from 'round the bend, two older fellows in a canoe came a'canoein'. With great and deft haste, my Female Companion harnessed her breasts before the two older fellows could have cause to know (they may have guessed) what they had interrupted.

One of the older fellows bid us, in a Not From Around Here accent, hello and good day. We replied in kind, and wished the two fellows happy paddling. They thanked us and paddled on, seemingly happy.

As they left our part of the creek, one of the older fellows said to the other, apropos of nothing whatsoever, "Ya know, I hear they shot 700 moose up in Maine last year." To which the other replied "700!?! Damn! That's alotta moose!"


I have had very few truly absurd experiences in my life. That was one of them.


And yet. 700 IS a lot of moose. A damned lot. I can't even imagine 700 moose. Why would one shoot them? What was done with the moose? Were they eaten? Surely the good people of Maine don't eat THAT much moose! There are only a few thousand people in Maine anyway, and moose are HUGE. Everyone must have been wicked sick and tired of moose by the end of that year.