STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK

PHOTOS BY SANDRA FLATTERY

The moose of East Fork don’t just stop to smell the roses. They stop to eat the lilies, too.

Residents of East Fork, five miles south of Ketchum, were pleasantly surprised this week to receive a  visit from a mother moose and her calf.

The mama and baby spent an entire day munching their way around John and Sandra Flattery’s house, sampling the shrubs and trees. Then they literally demolished all the pond lilies for dessert as Sandra Flattery shot a video of the long-legged calf carefully stepping down a flower-strewn waterfall as Mom nibbled on the leaves of trees near the pond

More munching. more lily shoots and long drinks of water. Then they bedded down for the night around a tree by the pond.

“The sprinklers probably moseyed them along in the middle of the night,” said Sandra Flattery. “They spent the next day at our neighbors—Louise and Jay Noyes’ home. They are making their way up East Fork.”

The Flatterys surmise the mama moose may be the grown-up version of a calf that enjoyed the bounteous smorgasbord of their yard a few years ago.

“Maybe she’s coming back with her baby to show the little one the delicious nibbles at our Canyon Road pond,” said Sandra Flattery.