In the evening quiet Library, the University Archivist, in whose domain the Music Box Book of Hours currently resided, had -- wearing white gloves in a controlled situation -- opened the manuscript and was looking at an image of an extraordinarily large animal.

Fantastic animals were not unknown in medieval manuscripts. At a time when many people could not read, monks carried bestiaries into local communities. Attracting crowds, they displayed images of animals in conjunction with instructive allegories. The fox was a trickster, kept in place by the regal lion; migrating cranes flew in military formation behind the leader; elephants carried warring castles on their backs.

But the animal in the Music Box Book of Hours was not an elephant, unless the creator had added horns and a large lumpy deer-horse head to an elephant image taken from some ancient source. It was not an heroic stag, legendary for killing a serpent who represented the devil. It was not a possibly imaginary shaggy coated, big horned Parandrus, sometimes painted in the color blue.

The more she stared at the image, the more it became clear that the animal standing in a landscape of deep snow and Northern woods was a Moose.

The images embedded in the botanical border, which surrounded this 15th century winter scene, were also surprising.