Mertle Moose Wins the Lottery

When Mertle Moose had something on her mind, which was often, she starred up at the clouds. On a particularly cloudy day in October, she was gazing up at the sky when her sister Maggie wandered over. "What are you thinking about?" Asked Mertle. "Oh, just daydreaming." Mertle mused. "Maggie, have you ever wondered what it would be like to live somewhere else? Somewhere exotic and far away like.. oh, perhaps Kansas or Kentucky or maybe Conneticut?"

"Never did wonder." Maggie said in between bites of scrub oak. "We've got everything we need right here." Mertle looked from Maggie to the clouds. She dreamt of a bustling city with tall buildings that reached the sky and she dreamt of living next to an ocean and feeling the cool salty breeze on her face. She could see all kinds of different places in the clouds.

"Well someday I might go." Said Mertle to no one in particular. "Hmph. Impossible." Mertle heard a voice say. It was her sister Marge, behind a pine tree. Myna wondered what everyone was talking about so she wandered over too. "How would you ever get there?" She asked. "I'd take a bus, or a train, or maybe a taxi" replied Mertle with a faraway look in her eye. "That's nice" her sisters said. But none of them believed her.

She didn't exactly have a plan, but she decided she would start in the morning. So the next morning, she said goodbye to her sisters and set off down the side of the mountain. When all the cars were gone she started crossing the road.

But something in the road caught her eye. It was red and had numbers on it. Mertle picked it up with her teeth. I'm going to hold on to this she thought. "I don't know how, but a red ticket with numbers on it must mean something."

Mertle continued across the road and into the forest of pine trees down the mountain. After walking for a few miles, she saw a gas station and decided she should ask someone what this ticket could mean. So she went inside with the ticket in her teeth. A few people ran away. Some took pictures. The man behind the registers cleaned off his glasses and put them back on. Mertle slowly walked over to the counter and set her ticket down. "Well I'll be darned" said the man behind the register. "It's a lottery ticket."

"And they're about to read them off" said a customer, who was watching the TV. "And the winning number is...9855677" said the announcer. That was the number on Mertle's ticket. "You won, you won!" the man behind the counter yelled. Mertle didn't know what any of this meant but it seemed the red ticket with numbers did mean something. "Call the nightly news, call the newspaper, call the lottery!"

Next thing Mertle new she was on a bus, with her ticket, and riding to a place called L.A. When she got there, there were cameras flashing everywhere. Everyone wanted pictures and interviews with the moose who won the lottery. Mertle was having the time of her life. There were people in fancy suits who took her to swanky restaurants. She got to ride in a bus, a train and a taxi.

"Well, here I am" thought Mertle as she looked around. "I'm someplace exotic. There's lots of strange people and tall buildings and all kinds of things I never even imagined." She walked through the crowded street to her hotel, smelling roasted peanuts and hearing sirens and feeling a little dizzy. She rode the elevator up, up and up.

Back in her hotel room, the lottery prize was delivered just as they had told her. It was piles and piles of green paper. Cash, they called it. "What's a moose supposed to do with piles of cash?" Mertle asked no one in particular. She thought for a minute then her stomach growled. "Maybe it tastes good" so she ate it.

"Yuck" she said after a few mouthfulls. Which reminded her, she really missed the scrub oak and water lilies and Aspen trees and especially her sisters. She left most of the piles of green paper in the room. "Maybe the housekeeper will want it" she thought to herself.

She picked up some of the green paper in her teeth, just in case it was lucky. And she headed back into town. She found a bus that said, "Out West" and there was where she was headed so she climbed on and dropped the green paper onto the busdrivers lap, like she saw someone else do. He looked up with big eyes and started driving. "Must be lucky green paper" she thought.

When he dropped her off, she was so happy to be back home that she ran all the way up the mountain, back to her sisters, back to the aspens and to everything familiar. "Look who's back" said Marge. "We missed you" said Myna. "We were worried about you" said Maggie. Mertle was glad to be back home. Now she would think of adventures that were close to home, becauase that is where she wanted to stay. Maggie was right, she did have everything she needed right here.