More close encounters of the natural kind

I was sitting upstairs at my computer last night -- in my little nook in the loft, above the living room -- and, from the corner of my eye, saw something move out of the big picture window in the living room. I looked down and there was a moose trotting by the window -- like about 5 feet from it! Damn thing was HUGE! It looked as big as a Thoroughbred horse. Orion and I ran downstairs and watched it trot down to the creek, walk into the creek, jump our bridge (a moose jumping a hurdle is a sight to behold) and trot off down the creek. It was a male with velveted antlers.

Later that night, I was lying in bed and Orion was upstairs, and I heard one of the freakiest sounds I've ever heard -- a deep, long, drawn-out, rising and falling moan. I got up convinced that something was horribly wrong with one of the dogs, but Orion said it came from outside. We figured it was a moose call. I looked up online this morning and the Internet claims that is a cow moose mating call (the bulls are supposed to grunt instead); however, I talked to my dad about it this morning and he said that he's heard that noise and actually saw a male moose making it -- he thought the moose must be wounded because it was groaning like that, so he approached it, and it freaked out and ran off into the woods. ("You're not a WOMAN!")

I knew that moose made noise, since clearly moose calling wouldn't work otherwise, but still, it was pretty cool. I've never heard that before.

I really should be working on my OWN comics...

Discovered a very neat online comic -- Crowfeather -- which reminds me quite a lot of Raven's Children set in the modern world. It's the story of one Chase Corbeau, the mixed-breed son of an Old West prostitute and the native american god Thunderbird. He was transformed into a crow over 100 years ago as punishment for a crime he committed, and the story takes the form of a tale he is telling to a human being in the present day who can understand him. The story moves back and forth between the past and present, and involves a variety of gods and nature spirits, as well as humans both good and evil.

I'm running into roadblocks with Freebird. I'm tempted to put it on hold for a couple of months while I do more in-depth scripting and acquire reference material. What's giving me fits right now is that in the next few pages, I need to introduce a couple of the major "sets" for the series, the house and road where the majority of the series will take place, and I haven't got the faintest idea what any of it should look like.