"Although medieval manuscripts are not my field", Sido commented, "a moose does not seem more unusual than the presence of elephants in the European manuscripts I have been looking at since I first discovered a book of hours in a painted music box."

"Yes, there are elephants in medieval manuscript, even earlier than the mid-thirteenth century when Matthew Paris documented the elephant that for the Royal Menagerie, King Louis IX of France gave to King Henry III of England. Where the French King got this elephant I do not know. But, whether from crusade travels or in cultural exchange, elephants were known by the creators of medieval bestiaries. However, I don't recall a moose in any other manuscript. Moose were mostly extinct in France at the time of the Music Box Book of Hours."

"So", Sido responded, "the question is: why does a moose appear in the Music Box Book of Hours?"

"The trail I want follow is in accounts of explorers in the New World, but also I'll look at other possibilities, such as Viking settlers in Brittany when in the aftermath of the Viking sieges of Paris in the 9th century, they sailed down the Seine. Long after the subsequent arrival of Viking men in Brittany and the Loire Valley, were memories of moose -- not uncommon in their homelands -- passed down in legend?"