It’s moose calving season in Alaska. Keep your distance or risk being stomped to a paste.

By habit learned the hard way, leaving our house requires a quick look around for "bears, beavers and other critters," as Jeremiah Johnson might say, before shutting the door — particularly nowadays.

This is the time of year when moose tend to forage in the woods behind the house, fattening up after a long, tough winter. The cows drop calves there, too, which makes them ornerier than wet hornets. Everything about the huge ungulates says, "I'll kill you for fun," and their mere presence calls for DEFCON 1-level vigilance to avoid being tap-danced into goo.

A few days back, after making our three dogs, two schnauzers and a teddy bear dog (yeah, yeah, I know) wait in the house while I scoped out the back yard and the woods — and, seeing and hearing nothing, I let them out and meandered onto to the deck behind them.

[Moose visit to Anchorage hospital goes viral]

A split second later, a sizable cow moose, ears laid back, hackles straight up, materialized — seemingly out of thin air — and boiled out of the woods, making a beeline for the dogs. They scattered like quail. She thundered over them, crow-hopping, kicking, but could not seem to focus on any one of the trio of yapping dogs. She would try to stomp one, but be distracted by another.

Brutus, the teddy bear dog (and apparently the smartest of the three), was a small white blur streaking for the house. There was a heartbeat-long break in the brouhaha, and the lunkhead schnauzers, almost to safety, decided that by God, it was their yard and turned to face the cow, setting off a second melee. Finally, their honor unsullied, they dashed through the door. That homicidal half-ton of maternal badness turned toward me and I was right behind them, slamming the door in her face.

The fracas ended in a draw, with — incredibly, miraculously — no broken bones, no blood.

[It's the season of newborn moose in Anchorage. Here's your annual reminder to steer clear.]

But the cow was so ticked off, she charged the deck two or three times before turning back to the woods — and her calf that could not have been more than an hour old. It was tiny, spindly, could barely stand. It would wobble and fall and awkwardly get back up, teetering, waiting to fall again. Watchful mom was never more than a few steps away, ready to stomp the living bejesus out of anything or anybody that got close. Lucky me; she decided the backyard was a nifty place to set up camp.

A day or so later, she drove off what likely was her calf from last year. It was not pretty. She was none too gentle.

While all this was going on, I noticed the scar down her left side — just like the scar the cow last year had, the cow that took up residence with newborn twins in the back yard and stayed for days. She was grouchy, too.

While I was pondering whether moose actually return like the swallows of Capistrano — and asking, "Why my back yard?" — the dogs still had to do their thing, moose or no moose.

Of course, it had started to drizzle. The backyard was moosed up, so we quietly tried the front yard, keeping a watch for our new friend just around the corner, only yards away. No good. We tried again. No good. That precipitated a wet walk around the block — the first of many such outings over the coming days. At dawn. Late in the day. All the really swell times to be walking around as bears and moose roamed the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, the cow — I dubbed her Ma — settled in next to the greenhouse, stripping nearby trees and shrubs and contentedly chewing her cud while her youngster lounged nearby.

She graciously would allow me to sit in a chair on the deck — immediately adjacent to the door, mind you — and watch or talk quietly to her. So — she with her cud, me with my adult beverage, and with her huge ears pivoting like radar dishes — we discussed current events. The Legislature. The Permanent Fund dividend ripoff. Getting $500 added to this year's dividend, it being an election year and all. The gas line pipe dream. None of it impressed her.

['Just don't do that': Man kicks moose; moose returns the favor]

We talked a little every day. Her progeny seemingly grew stronger by the hour. They roamed farther from the greenhouse, finally making it into the front yard and trapping me in my truck for 25 minutes. But each night, they were back.

The entire affair was so … Alaska. Then, they were gone. No goodbye. Poof. The dogs are deliriously happy and I'm left to wonder whether she, indeed, was the same cow that showed up last year.

If it was her, maybe she will come back with another calf next year to see me.

I pray I see her first.