We’re going to take a little break from Willie and Indy because I’ve had a few complaints about today’s topic.
As in, the involved parties are disappointed it has taken me three months to tell their story.
Well here it is, guys.
In October, Don, his dad, and a few friends went to Canada to hunt moose.
Wait. Let me back up a minute.
You may recall the fight over the freezer.
Well, fight is a strong word. Disagreement? Dispute? Debate? It was any and all of those.
That friction became absolutely moot once the moose trip was on. Moose are huge. One chest freezer and half of the freezer in a standard fridge would not hold one moose, let alone the many it was possible to bag on this trip.
There was only one thing to do.
Yes. We bought another freezer.
It’s massive. It’s an upright freezer, taller than any standard refrigerator I’ve ever seen. I didn’t even know such a thing existed. But it does, and it lives in my garage.
Alongside, of course, the chest freezer and the refrigerator.
And I can’t even complain because Willie’s Dickens’ Village houses have been in the garage for three years. And show no sign of moving because first I’d have to evict the skinks and we all know I’m not evicting the skinks.
So the fellas packed their gear and headed north of the border in search of their great white whale to cram into the great white freezer.
None in the group had taken such a trip before. I was genuinely hoping for their success.
I just didn’t think their success would, in a small way, rely on me.
The challenging bit of these Canada trips is the inability to communicate with the outside world.
There is no phone. No cell service. No Wi-Fi. They’re like Doc Brown, peacefully living in 1885.
Don has a device that uses a satellite or magic or maybe even Doc Brown himself to send me text messages. He’s very diligent, sending me daily bon mots along with satellite GPS of his location.
As the guys’ week wound down, I received a text. A member of their group had successfully bagged a moose.
At this point, it was all hands on deck to field dress the moose. They also had to contact the outfitter for the trip, who would fly in, pick up the moose, and hold it until the guys were ready to head home.
I’ll pause the story here to tell you my meager knowledge of field dressing. You can’t just carry the whole animal out of the woods to the plane or the kitchen or wherever freaky place you want to bring your moose.
You have to lighten him up a bit, and there are a whole bunch of innards you don’t want to eat. It’s not like anyone is dying for moose rectum en croute or anything.
But you can’t just cut the nasty bits out all freestyle like you’re Jackson Pollack. One wrong move and all that poop and/or pee spill into your meat and now you’ve bagged that moose for nothing because it’s pretty inedible after that.
I’m like 83% sure anyway.
So field dressing is time-consuming. It’s also very physical. You wouldn’t expect flesh to be so heavy, but if The Merchant of Venice can extract a pound of flesh, there’s probably more left, right?
So the fellas got to work. They also pulled out the satellite phone supplied by the outfitter. Their intent was to use the satellite phone to contact the outfitter so they could fly in to pick up the meat.
“Like Jurassic Park 3?” I asked Don when he relayed the story.
“What?” Don asked, because he is literally the only guy I’ve ever met who never got into dinosaurs.
In Jurassic Park 3, the satellite phone – in a moment of dire need – makes a call that is answered by a toddler.
This maybe would have been better for the guys because in their case, the satellite phone didn’t work at all.
On the spectrum of non-life-threatening catastrophes, this is probably at the top. You can’t have the moose hang around forever. With no refrigerated or frozen space to keep the moose, rot and bears become serious threats.
Who knew, right?
So the guys decided on their next move.
Which was me.
They used Don’s texting device thing to explain their predicament. Could I please contact the outfitter?
I am an unlikely heroine here. For my money, they could have stayed in Pennsylvania where they all had phones that worked. But they’ve never told me Jurassic Park 3 is stupid so I won’t tell them to stay in Pennsylvania. I called the outfitter.
And got their voicemail.
Their outgoing message is in French, which I took for seven years so I understood when they said “zero,” and not much else.
So I emailed them.
And believed my work was done.
On this particular day, I was scheduled to coach a boxing class for people with Parkinson’s disease. I headed to my class, glad the guys got their moose and glad I could help.
Until I arrived at my boxing class and checked my email.
The outfitter wanted to know how long the guys would take to field dress the moose.
I mean, I kind of feel like you’re the moose hunting outfitter. Don’t you know how long it takes to field dress a moose? Because I don’t. I have literally never seen a moose in real life. You could tell me forty-five minutes or forty-five hours. Neither would surprise me.
I do know how long it takes to watch Jurassic Park 3, which is about an hour longer than it needs to take because you can pretty much figure out the plot from the get-go.
And also, that outfitter was about eight hundred miles closer to the guys than I was. I had no way to contact the guys. But the outfitter has a plane. Couldn’t they just fly over and ask the guys how long they’d be? They’re all outdoorsy – the outfitter and the guys. Don’t they all know how to signal with flags or smoke or Morse code or something?
I had to wait for Don to contact me with the magic button thing. I relayed the outfitter’s question.
“Four hours,” he replied.
I emailed the outfitter, then set about working with my class.
Until the outfitter emailed me again. How big was the moose?
Dude, do you not understand you dropped these boys in the middle of nowhere? If you can’t communicate with them even though you all are in the exact same Canadian province, what makes you think I, separated from them by the entire state of New York and about four million trees, can get this information any easier than you can?
And aren’t all moose legal enough to hunt roughly the same size anyway? Do you think they got the Clifford the Big Red Dog of moose?
Again, I had to wait for Don to contact me before I could get the answer to the outfitter’s question. And as this was time sensitive, I apologized to my boxers for the attention I was paying to my phone.
And if you’ve never explained to normal people that you’re emailing a Canadian outfitter details about your husband’s moose hunt because he has no way to communicate with the civilized world, you haven’t lived.
“He can’t communicate with anyone?” “Is that even possible in the twenty-first century?” “Exactly how far away is he?” “How can he text you but not be able to call?” “You can hunt moose?” “Who would eat moose?” “How do you prepare it?” “How big is it?” “How will they get the moose from Canada to Philadelphia?”
All questions I had, once upon a time. Now look at me. Quasi-explaining field dressing and holding master classes on the Canadian wilderness and moose hunting.
Don texted me, I asked my question, then passed the information to the outfitter like it was high school and Don and the outfitter were passing notes about the prom. With me as the go-between.
The outfitter emailed me again, to say bad weather was coming in. They’d be taking the guys out early and could I tell them?
I am not sure how these two groups of outdoorsy people came to rely so heavily on someone who spent the week Don was gone watching The Morning Show, but I think I’ve earned an honorary declaration of outdoorsy-ness. Right?
So the guys came home, their moose in tow. They divvied the big guy up, each hunter taking a section to butcher.
Now, Don has never shirked from watching a Star Trek movie with me, so I wasn’t about to abandon him in his hour of need.
I helped butcher the moose.
Really, I should say I wasn’t about to abandon him in his eleven hours of need, because that’s how long it took to process the moose.
For eleven hours we toiled – Don non-stop, me circulating through when the day/ kids/ Willie and Indy allowed. Pete suffered not-so-quietly in close proximity to the kitchen, his beagle hopes high we would drop something, anything he could eat.
Don is the John Wayne Gacy of butchers, leaving bits of butchered goo everywhere. Pete was not disappointed.
And after eleven hours of butchering pure Canadian moose, do you know what one fearless hunter/butcher and one reluctant butcher eat for dinner?
Pizza. Because it’s like seven o’clock and who wants to spend an hour cooking up some moose steak?
I used an app to order pizza, because I was connected to Wi-Fi like a normal person. Then we watched an episode of Ted Lasso, because we could stream like normal people.
But let’s be honest. These boys of mine are not normal people. They are extraordinary. They explore places I would never go, due to the lack of creature comforts.
They secure food in a manner I never could, because it’s easier to buy your meat at the store where you don’t have to look it in the eye.
And they are not afraid to rely on someone less capable than them. Just the thought of relying on someone – capable or not – sends me into a panic.
Oh, I just realized something. I am Batman to their Commissioner Gordon. I took the call and saved Gotham. I mean, I would prefer to be Captain Picard or Commander Riker or someone like that, but I’m not going to be picky. I’ll take Batman.
And I’ll always take the call.
Just not during The Morning Show.