The arrival of March in Interior Alaska is a wonderful change.  Temperatures generally don’t stray much below twenty below F and the light is increasing by about thirty five minutes a week.  It’s a great time to be out. Moose don’t really mind the cold in fact they might seek the shade even at fifty below zero because their huge bodies produce so much heat.

But by March moose have been on winter rations for almost six months. Their winter diet, consisting mostly of willow tips, some dwarf birch shrubs, quaking aspen, paper birch and a little alder, is abundant but drab and coarse. It will be a couple more months before the first succulent feed, new willow shoots and aquatic vegetation will become available. One particular cow likes to stop by and window shop, that is gaze longingly at the house plants through the window.  She has long since pawed  the snow on our garden plots to taste the dried cabbage, broccoli and flower leaves.  I am sure if she could catch the sweet scent of the house plants, nothing could keep her out.