Moose & Stephen King

I am laying on my stomach reading Stephen King’s latest book on the overgrown grass at Prospect Park. I am thinking how long grass is so much nicer than short grass with its sharp stubbly short blades. The sun feels good on my calves. It’s a Monday. Not a lot of people are at the park. I feel good. I feel lucky. I am at the place in Lisey’s Story where a novel’s plot begins to thicken. I am enmeshed in the sparks of suspense and in the outer aura of my present moment I am slightly distracted.

“Moose! Moose! MOOOOOSSSSE!” I hear a far away voice yelling but I am not registering partly because I know there are no moose in Brooklyn.

“MOOSE. COME. MOOSE.”

I am reading about the protagonist reaching into her mailbox to find a bloodied, dead cat. I am spooked. It is the middle of the day. Broad daylight. I look up from the book to comfort myself with the reality which is mine.

Comfort is far from mine.

There is a pit bull charging at me. He has struck what appears to look like a hunting-like gallop and he is coming right to me. I am partially submerged in long grass. I look like prey. His brown, muscular shoulders are supporting a broad head with a tongue splayed out of the side of his mouth. He is galloping and his owner, blurry in the background, is beginning to sprint in my direction.

I think: “Oh. This must be Moose.”

For some reason, I don’t freak. Usually when danger presents itself to me, I flee. But I think I know how dogs (in particular, how pit bulls) operate and decide that I should be submissive. No sudden movements. Things could be worse, I could be a character in Stephen King’s imagination.

Moose is right in my face now. I say gently, “Hello, Moose.”

That’s all.

I’m not risking my hand to pet him.

“MOOOOOOSSSSSE! He’s a puppy. He doesn’t bite.” His owner is attempting to reassure me of my survival as he gets closer to us. But I think of the dead animal in the mail box and visualize the pit bull’s jaw locking on my jugular as the owner stands there helplessly saying, “he’s never done this before!”

There is no leash. On the dog. Or in the owner’s hand.

The owner gets his hands on him and pulls him away, whacking him a few times and then finally tugging him back to the family’s blanket by his choke collar.

I sit there frozen. And as I watch them walk back towards their stomping ground, my heart races. Pounds. Climbs into my throat and I think: “I should go. If Chris, the voice of reason, were here, he would make us get up and move to a new place in the park.” I begin to put my sneakers on. I am tying my laces when my heart rate slows down and I think: “Nothing is going to happen. They will put a leash on him.”

I revert to bare feet and lay back down on my stomach.

I resume Lisey’s Story and the dead animal clean up.

“MOOOOOOSSSSSE! MOOSE. Come, Moose.” I look up and see Moose charging, this time with physical contact, a man who is sleeping with a straw hat laying over his face. I search the vicinity, looking for the ever-important eye contact that signifies comraderie: “can you believe this?” But the few people around me are reading, sleeping, sun-bathing.

For about twenty minutes, Moose charges at and hunts down a few more people. He genuinely pursues the man in the straw hat and I think about a picture I saw on a stranger’s blog recently of a pit bull mired with porcupine needles. The pit bull and porcupine got in a fight in someone’s backyard. The porcupine won. See exhibit A. But there is no porcupine here in Prospect Park and Moose is looking for a serious throw-down. I decide that I don’t want to be Moose’s choice for a throw-down, especially since I do not have the necessary needles.

I decide its time to retire from Prospect Park and read Stephen King at home, alone, under the covers. The way his books were intended to be read.

No more Moose for me.