Where this valley meets those trees, a huge, black bull moose stands belly-deep in a dead meander, now a beaver pond, of a lost creek in Yellowstone. The animal's hump is more than six feet from the bottom of the pond and the palms of its enormous antlers are white in the morning light. The bull is grazing on the bottom of the beaver pond in early morning light and frost is thick on the long, bent grasses at the edge of the bright water. Pink light glistens on the rime of frost on the willow leaves, and the Absaroka Mountains are perfectly imaged in the pond. Suddenly, a beaver's tail slaps the water and the moose lifts its wet face.
Water cascades from the majestic rack of horns.
Dripping aquatic vegetation hangs from its mouth. The large, delicate nostrils open and the small pig-like eyes blink to clear its sight because It knows well enough to heed the wary beaver's alarm. The rank smell of rotten flesh drifts to it on the air and an explosion of breath balloons in a rainbow mist around the shovels of its antlers. A tall ridge of black guard hairs erects along its neck and hump. Adrenaline floods its muscles as its eyes pick out another beast standing in the willows only twenty-five yards away.