"Where's [Grouse]?"

This, from Chuck to the wife as she was buying tickets for herself and eldest son, at the last minute, at what was supposed to be the last showing of Return of the King in the large theater with the best sound system.

"He's inside a horse trailer at Lamont," she answered.

"With a moose."

Which wasn't quite true, because we were no longer at Lamont. And no longer in the horse trailer. And four minutes later, the heeler sisters and I blew past that same movie theater, still following the game warden truck that was towing the horse trailer that was carrying the moose.

The call came around 14:45. A gal who has helped us with injured animals calls before. Reporting a moose calf that has been down, and not gotten up, since nine o'clock this morning.

This in the desert, at least three miles from anything that could be even remotely considered to be moose habitat. And a good ten miles from anyplace where you expect to find a moose.

But then, three miles is nothing for a long-legged thing like a moose. Neither is ten miles.

The heelers are thrilled to actually be going somewhere, and I have to stop 25 miles north of town to let them run, just to shut up all the whining in the truck. Then we're off to hunt moose.

The little moose calf (Now, everything is relative. Here, "little" means probably only 250 pounds or so.) is right where he's reported to be. Bedded down in an abandoned communications site right off the highway. Trapped behind eight feet of chain link fence with topping strands of barbed wire. The only exit the same open gate he used to get in, which will only lead him back out onto the busy highway that he is trying to escape from.

So, I park the truck at the gate, blocking his exit, even though he has made no indication he is willing to move anywhere at all, and start making calls. Within minutes I've got contact with both local wardens. We hash through the drawbacks of all our options. Tranquilizing wild animals is a whole lot riskier than they show on tv, and the last two attempts any of us have been involved with at using drugs to gather up lost moose calves each ended up with dead moose.

Waiting for their common sense to lead them out of their predicament led to the death of a third moose calf. So we can't just do nothing.

We have access to hand held netguns, two hours away, but there's the risk the net weights can kill or injure the moose, and the net is almost certain to get tangled up in the fence or towers. Which means trying to untangle a mesh net from a fence at the same time the moose in the net is trying to stomp you to death.

Not an enviable position.

So, we soon come up with plan A and plan B. Plan A is we try to haze the moose out of the enclosure into a horse trailer. This would be safest for the moose, but maybe riskiest for us. Plan B, if Plan A fails, is to simply rope the moose, and drag it into the trailer. Riskier for the moose, and still just as risky to us. But those are our best options.

So, I step out and close the open gate, trapping the moose in the handy-dandy chain link moose corral.

And we wait.

One of the outfit's bosses, passing by on a distant interstate, calls over the radio to see what our traffic is about. And expresses regret that we are too far away from one of our fellow employees in the southwestern portion of the state. A fellow who has become so adept at handling errant moose, they now call him the "Moose Whisperer."

Within 45 minutes, both wardens have joined me and the moose, complete with horse trailer. The sun has just set.

We are soon joined by a grandfather and his grandson, who came up from the restaurant down the road to watch the show.

We set up Plan A. One warden stands by the trailer gate, while I and the other warden enter the enclosure, with a brand new blanket from my truck draped across a rope between us.

To make us look bigger.

I get to make first contact, sneaking into the corner with the moose.

And promptly get stomped at. Which is a serious matter with a critter that vastly outweights you, and is 90 percent legs.

I hold my ground, fluffing out my jacket to look bigger, and it works. He veers out front.

Only to attack the warden with me, who is a good half-foot shorter target. But she stands her ground also, waving the blanket, and the moose heads to the gate.

And we stand there, talking to the moose, blocking its path whenever it tries to move from the gate, for almost an hour. And all the time he is clacking his teeth at us, his hackles raised high like a hyena. We get his head facing into the trailer several times, but he never commits. I blame the two tourists standing out in the open, walking around in front of the trailer. And yell for them to leave. They don't.

Only after dark do they leave, and the moose still won't go into the trailer. Even when we flip loose ends of rope onto his head and butt to spur him on. Time for Plan A and a half, conceived on the fly, which is tying ropes to the front of the gate and making a rope funnel (like a celebrity Red Carpet) to direct the moose where we want him to go.

Doesn't work. Ends with moose bursting through under the ropes, and retreating to his favorite corner.

Plan B it is.

One warden single-handedly nooses the tired moose and begins leading it to the gate, and then the moose collapses, halfway to the trailer.

Not dead, but not moving. And not breathing. (Our vet later told us moose do that, under stress. They just quit. Like they decide to quit living.) So I prop the moose's head and neck upright in my lap, and the wardens administer CPR (ie, they pound on his chest). And I soon have a living, blinking, ear-twitching, breathing moose.

On my lap.

Which is incredibly cool.

With a great deal of wrangling, we drag the unresisting mass of moose into the trailer. And I again sit with a moose on my lap. And eventually end upright on my knees, leaning across the moose, my legs propping him up on his brisket (vital for ungulates, else their rumen fluids may slosh up into their windpipe).

And here I learn that moose are warm.

Leaving the moose alone for a while soon finds him collapsed on his side again, which is just when the wife called and found out about my evening, and the end of my movie plans. We eventually prop the moose in an upright position with a couple railroad ties, and head off to town under the rising full moon.

The veterinarian is already at their hospital waiting for us, but his wife pulls in right behind us. Whether to be of vital assistance, or just to see a moose, I do not know. But he admits this is the first moose he's ever handled. You can tell they're both enjoying this, as is the attention-addicted barnyard cat. Within minutes, the little moose calf receives injections of penicillin and cortisone, and a direct injection of glucose solution into a neck artery. All things to help it recover from the stress of capture.

And then, for dehydration, the little guy got a one liter IV of saline solution. There in the horse trailer.

All things are looking promising at this point. The moose is still in his trailer, in a horse pasture at the edge of town, awaiting sunrise. If he survives the night, and all looks good, he is in for another ride back north, back to real moose country.

So, how was your day?