“The Day the Elk Went to School” by Randy Long

The day the elk came to town, I went to sleep, on a Saturday night, early. Fell asleep after a long, hot day in June, sunny, and after mowing the lawn and doing yard work most of the day. It had been a busy afternoon. There were cops, and sirens going off. Someone robbed the minute mart down the road.

Well, I lived right down next to a high school, and behind the high school was a stadium with a fence around it, and outside that fence was a big field in a giant circle. Well, the trees were evergreens and cut up from the bottom so that, if you bent down, you could see what was under them and see the field. The trees were cut up about 3 or 4 feet from the bottom, and the trees were about 20 feet tall.

Well, like I said, I fell asleep fairly early, and between the sirens and other noise, I still slept pretty good, until about 3:45 in the morning. I woke up and looked outside through the window. Well, there’s a street light right out front, plus that night there was a full moon, and between the two, it was pretty light outside when I looked out. There were 3 or 4 cops outside, showing their flashlights all around, and the first thing I thought was, maybe they had the guy who robbed the minute mart, and he was in the area. Well, they hung around the neighborhood for about an hour, and finally left. It was about 5 o’clock and getting light.

About then, I decided to go and get the Daily News paper. I went outside to the sidewalk and across the street to see what the cops were looking at. As I started to look under the trees into the field, out from under the trees and onto the sidewalk burst a huge elk with a huge rack of antlers towering next to me. I kind of jumped back, startled, and the big elk looked around and began running straight down the middle of the road. It got about 5 or 6 blocks down the road, by the store, turned down the block, and galloped away. The day the elk went to school.

—Randy Long

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[Originally posted 13 Apr. 2013 @ The P.E.W.]