"Cheese is the Devil's plaything." - Dr. Gregory House, House, M.D.

Original Post Date: July 2, 2005

That's Anchorage above, at about 11pm, near the solstice. A pretty place, mountains all around. You can click on the picture to make it larger, and, it's worth it.

But, too many rules here in the big city. Probably can't hunt moose in town.

Anyway, I got an actual moose-related letter from an Alert Reader with a question:

Dear Chicago Sun,
Do you have moose cheese up in Alaska? My daddy says if it's in the Sun, it's so.
signed,
Virginia

First, I was worried. When would the Chicago Sun catch me reading their mail?

Second, I was thoughtful. Hmmm, don't remember seeing that at the local Safeway or Fred Meyer's store. Maybe in with the mouse eggs?

Then I thought about the process involved in making moose cheese. You'd need to:

• catch a 1200 pound moose
• keep catching and releasing moose until you got a female (important before you started milking)
• check the moose to make sure she was lactating
• milk said 1200 pound moose
• and repeat this process until you got enough moose milk to make cheese.

This was enough to make me think that the idea was a bogus one, unless you were a suicidal hippy. Lo, I must report, gentle reader, I was totally wrong.
There is moose cheese, Virginia.

I pulled the following story off of ESPN, for heaven's sake. ESPN has an article on moose cheese. Virginia, if it's in ESPN it's so. I used the very useful "Bork" text feature that one can download for Firefox, and am pleased to present the a paragraph on moose cheese, as presented by a Muppet Swedish Chef:

Fermers in nurzeern Svedee ere-a meelking muuse-a und mekeeng cheese-a, vheech zeey sell fur a lut ooff duoogh — neerly $500 a puoond. Zee booyers incloode-a upscele-a hutels und restoorunts in Svedee. Bork Bork Bork!

Chreester Juhunssun und hees veeffe-a, Ulla, sterted zeeur 59-ecre-a deury ferm, "Muuse-a Huoose-a," sefee yeers egu in Bjoorshulm, 404 meeles nurt ooff zee cepeetel, Stuckhulm. Zeey cleeem it is zee oonly muuse-a deury ferm in Ioorupe-a. Bork Bork Bork!

So, Chreester Juhunssun is making moose cheese. At $500 per pound, with a total output of 660 pounds, Chreester is making about $330,000. Selling moose cheese. After Swedish taxes European taxes, and Moose tax, that would leave him with about $53.21, enough to buy that new ABBA album he'd been saving for.

So, now I know that moose cheese exists, an important lesson. Another important lesson I learned was that Swedish is not a language, but only any accent.