Whatever happened to cool?

It seems like everything was so much cooler when I was younger. Trees were bigger (and cooler), rocks were cooler, and playing outside with nothing but a few sticks and my imagination was WAY cooler than it is now. When did things start becoming so un-cool?

One summer my younger brother Jake and I spent the week at my Grandma’s house in North Ogden.

One day, while we were playing outside (with rocks and sticks and imaginations) we spotted a real, live MOOSE.

A moose! Walking up and down the paved streets of North Ogden Utah. We were ecstatic, as you can imagine. I had never been so close to a moose in my entire life. Jake and I hurriedly ran inside to tell Grandma about our encounter. She (for our protection, I’m sure) forbade us from leaving the house.

So, we did the next best thing to interacting with a moose… we found a window.

We smashed our faces up against the window and watched the towering moose wander around the neighborhood. He looked like he was having the time of his life, being the center of attention of this little suburban neighborhood. I half expected him to pull on his tap shoes and do a little soft shoe number for us.

Once the moose was out of sight and Grandma thought it was safe, we were released from the confines of the house. We immediacy ran out front to see if we could catch one last glimpse of the moose. We searched up and down the street. Jake spotted him first.

Jake: “Torrey look! There he is!”

The moose was just turning the corner. We desperately wanted to follow him, but we were afraid we would get in trouble by doing so. Instead, we sat under a tree on the rocks out front and speculated about the origins of the moose.

(Jake - Bottom Row, far right. Me - Second Row, second from the right).

Jake: “Where do you think he came from?”

Me: “The forest, of course.”

Jake: “Cool!”

Me: “Did you see how long his legs were?”

Jake: “I bet he could beat up Dad.”

Me: “I doubt it.”

Jake: “We should name him Gonzo.”

Me: “You want to name EVERYTHING Gonzo.”

Jake: “It’s a cool name.”

Me: “What if he’s a girl?”

Jake: “Gonzo can be a girls name.”

Our conversation continued on with a million other similar comments and retorts until a man in a uniform approached us.

Man: “Hey kids, have you by chance seen a moose around here?”

(Classic child abductor material. Am I right? Really though, if I were to nap a kid I would definitely go with the whole “I’ve lost my moose” routine. Because it works!)

Jake and I looked at each other, eyes wide and full of excitement.

Me: “Yeah, we have, and we can take you to him!”

We hopped off the rock and without giving a second thought to Grandma and what she might be feeling when he grandkids turned up missing, we began the great moose hunt.

The street in front of Grandma’s house was on a hill. We had last seen the moose at the top of the hill, so we turned right and headed that way. As we began our trek, we quizzed the man.

(Good idea, question the strange man AFTER you’ve left the safety of your grandma’s yard.)

Me: “Is that moose your pet?”

Man: “Uh, no. I’m with animal control. I got a call to come take care of the moose.”

Jake: “Is his name Gonzo?”

Man: “Um… maybe. I don’t know.”

Me: “What are you going to do with him?”

Man: “Well, first we need to find him. Then we’re going to help him take a nap… with a tranquilizer gun.”

Jake: “Cool!”

Me: “Will it hurt him?”

Man: “No, it will just knock him out so we can transport him away from humans.”

At this point we had made it to the top of the street. Suddenly, I saw a big tall ball of fur out of the corner of my eye!

Me: “There he is!”

The moose was in a nearby yard, just standing there, looking all sad and confused. Poor little moose didn’t know what to do with all of those driveways and mailboxes surrounding him.

Jake and I started to run toward the moose. The uniformed man stopped us.

Man: “Hang on there, don’t get too close. Just because he’s in this neighborhood doesn’t make him any less of a wild animal.”

The man radioed his position to his fellow Animal Controllers.

Suddenly, an entire SWAT team of Animal Control personnel arrived on the scene. They were rappelling from the roofs of houses, some parachuted in, others climbed out of man holes… ok, not really. But a bunch of them really did show up (in boring ol’ cars).

One of uniformed man’s associates quickly got out the tranquilizer gun and propped it up on his car. He took careful aim at the gigantic beast…. And then he shot it.

The moose didn’t seem to notice that he had been shot. He slowly started to walk around the yard, but he quickly became drowsy and soon tumbled to the ground.

My eyes immediately welled up with tears and I began to cry uncontrollably. The uniformed man tried to console me.

Man: “It’s ok, he’s not dead…. he’s just asleep.”

I was not convinced. I had been pretty trusting of the uniformed man up to this point, but how was I to know his buddy hadn’t switched out the tranquilizer dart with a bullet at the last moment? The uniformed man approached the moose and poked him to ensure it was safe to be near.

Man: “Look, he’s still breathing. See? Do you want to come touch him?”

Jake swiftly ran over to the moose and began petting him.

Jake: (whispering in the moose’s ear) “Hey Gonzo, it’s ok, no one’s gonna hurt you, they just want to help you get home.”

I was still wary of the whole situation, but I wasn’t going to let my little brother get all of the face time with the moose. I inched closer and closer to “Gonzo” until I found myself kneeling by his side, petting him.

Man: (grabbing a tuft of Gonzo’s hair and pulling it out) “Here, keep this, as a way to remember him”.

The uniformed man gave each of us a hand full of moose hair.

By this time Grandma had realized we were missing and had come to find us. She couldn’t get too upset at us for running off, after all, a 900 pound moose had just been shot right before our eyes. Tranquilizer gun or not, that is a pretty horrific experience, especially when strange men started ripping the poor animals hair out.

So, instead of scolding us, Grandma took us home and gave us Ziploc bags for our moose hair and ice cream cups to eat.

When we got home from our exciting week with Grandma, I carefully laid my packaged moose hair in my top dresser drawer. I would often retrieve Gonzo’s hair and just sit and look at it. I never took it out of the baggie though, I was too scared that the air would damage it and it wouldn’t last as long (and now that I'm reflecting back on this story, I'm pretty sure something was mentioned by one of the Animal Control people about the moose being rabid... so I could have been subconsciously afraid of contracting rabies by touching the hair... yes, I know that is impossible... but, just sayin'.)

Man, that moose hair was SO COOL. Probably the coolest.

What sort of things did you used to find SO cool?