You remind me of a moose, Rapaire. Specifically the loser in the "gather up stones in your antlers to prove you love me" contest set by a lady moose to two suitors in order to settle their suit. They had from sunrise to sunset to gather all the stones they could carry and fetch them back and drop them at her feet. Not an easy trick for a moose, you will allow.

Annyhoo, the first suitor asshowed up with four or five he had scraped up into his antlers, and he was exhausted just from that. They waited and waited. Finally after a few hours, the second suitor showed up bleeding, bruised and limping, and with no stones to show for his effort.

Of course, the lady was concerned and asked him what had happened to him, and he explained that he had gotten lots of stones--more than his competitor!--and was just starting to come back down the mountain with them, when one of them fell out of its perch in his antlers, landed on his toe, and made him trip. He fell so hard he started careening down the mountain side, his various stones flying around him.

"And as you know," he explained, "a rolling moose gathers no stones."

Are we even now?


A