Ever See a Moose in a Mask?
I’m sitting in my Docent-at-a-Distance booth across from the Visirors’ Center on the pathway people take to see the animals. I’m not busy. Nobody wants the information the sign outside my window offers. The clumps of people pass me by, hardly sparing a glance for me. Sometimes a child, curious about everything, notices me, and I wave and smile at her (or him, but mostly her). They can’t see my smile, because I’m wearing a mask with a lot of pictures of animals on it. The fabric has moose and foxes on it. The mask was made for me by one of the Gatehouse attendants. It’s great for me because it has long strings that I tie on top of my head and at the back of my neck. (Sometimes I wear a mask with ear loops, but I wear hearing aids and glasses that bend around my ears. Too much metal behind my ears, and the loops get under all of it and when I take them out my glasses slip and the hearing aids do too. But all of us who volunteer or work at the Park are under strict orders to wear masks.)