Percival, the Triple-Threat Elk

One day at the Rocky Mountain National Park, I met an elk. He was standing no more than 20 feet off the gravel trail. I looked at the elk. The elk looked at me. He became fixated on the camera hanging around my neck.

“You gonna take my picture?” he asked.

I was stunned. “Oh, my God! A talking elk.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Name is Percival. I’m a 10-point bull elk, not a scratch on me. It’s generally accepted that I’m the best-looking elk from here to Telluride.”

“Percival, I definitely would like to take a few photos of you.”

He looked off to the distance, and I took several photos.

“The lighting and the mountains in the backdrop are perfect!” I said.

“Thank you. I scouted this location myself,” he said. “Would you mind sending those to me? I need some new headshots for my portfolio. I don’t have any money but I could send you a few bucks. Ha-ha. A deer joke.”

I agreed, and Percival expressed his preference for receiving them on a thumb drive even though he had no thumbs. Or to post them on my blog.

“Wait! Wait! Let me turn so you can get my best side. How’s this? Dramatic, huh! I tell you, I could take Hollywood by storm if I only had an agent. Hey, are you an agent? Naw, I didn’t think so. You don’t look the type. Here, get this one – my badass mean elk face. Throughout the high country, they call me a triple threat. I got the looks, I can sing and I can dance.”

He proceeded to sing, which was more like yodeling. Still, impressive for an elk. Then he did a soft shoe on the tundra, followed by a polka. No lie.

“I tell jokes, too,” Percival said. Without hesitation he launched into one.
“Two hunters are sitting at a bar. One says, ‘Did you know that some elks have sex 10 or 15 times a night?’ The second hunter gets all irritated. ‘Dammit,’ he says. ‘I just joined the VFW.’” He chortled.

“What I really need is a video,” he said. “All I’ve got is some aerial T&C video from last year. Tracking and Counting by the park service. Amateurs. You can’t even tell it’s me.” He asked me to take a few cliché shots of him eating and looking wistfully into the distance.  

Percival, the triple-threat elk, good luck with that agent thing. No doubt, Hollywood will be calling.