A Moose Story

I recently had a meeting with a spiritual teacher while on a shamanic journey. He told me this story:

Moose comes down from the mountains to a small town. He begins feeding on the nice food in the house gardens of the town's human residents. The townspeople become angry and start murmuring against him and there is the worry of a threat against him. He then puts on human clothes and the townspeople began to think well of him and complain no more, and are actually delighted to see him. Everybody is happy.

OK, that's a very short tale, and while it was being told to me I wasn't sure where it was going or how long it would be. I was worried that I would have a harder time recalling a longer tale, but it was short enough that I could recall it and tell it to the group afterwards.

I think that the story not only has some special meaning for me, but it seems that it has some general teaching, too. Some of the people heard the story and saw Moose as a trickster and some saw the story as being about the inability of people to see what is right in front of their eyes. Moose is a huge creature and just wearing a plaid shirt and slacks would not seem to be enough to pass as human. Maybe the idea of Moose dressing up as human is like the way that a shaman will dress up as an animal spirit.

I also think that there is an aspect of dressing up what is not acceptable in better clothing in order to achieve your ends. Is Moose wrong to pass himself off as human? I like the idea of Moose socializing with the happy townspeople while eating their vegetables. Moose has provided food for many people and it only seems fair that humans return the favor.

Doing a little bit of searching on the web for Moose as an animal spirit shows that a lot of articles associate Moose with self-esteem and the magic of life and death. Digging deeper it seems that the idea of moving to and from the other world has something to do with this, so it seems right that Moose travels down to the human world and dons human guise to blend in. There's an interesting connection here to journeying between worlds, which is how the story arrived here.