There once was an elk who was special. This was usually common among humans, but less so among elks. Elks are usually all the same, like caribou and reindeer. They have hoofs and horns. The live in the colder places of the world. They eat grass and berries. This elk wasn’t different than the other elks in these ways. He had hoofs and horns. He lived in a cold place, called Canada. He ate grass and berries.
What made this elk different than all the other elks was that he could talk to inanimate objects, such as vegetable cans or wooden doors. The elk was named Brown Nose, because he had a brown nose, like everyone else. There happened to be a lot of elk in Canada named Brown Nose. They all had brown noses, and because the elk were mostly the same, they had no imagination to name their baby elks anything else.
One winter, when Brown Nose had gotten older, there was a big snow storm. It came on quickly, and Brown Nose was caught out in it while he was eating some berries he had found. He ran for cover when it started to snow. He could barely see anything through the snow pouring down, but he kept running. Eventually, he saw an old abandoned house up ahead, so he ran to it. The door looked open, so he walked it, his hard hoofs pounding on the old boards. He tried to shut the door, but he saw that there wasn’t a door there. It was still cold in here, so he tried to find a place where the cold wouldn’t get to him. He went down to the basement of the house.
It wasn’t as cold down there and maybe he could find some food. He looked on the shelves, but there wasn’t anything there. Obviously when people abandoned this house, they took all there food. Then he heard  a whisper. He looked around, but didn’t see anything.
“Hey,” said a voice, “look down here.”
Brown Nose looked down, but all he saw was a can of vegetables, green beans to be exact. He didn’t know who was trying to talk to him, but this food looked great. Brown Nose was extremely hungry, so he pushed on the can to try to open it.
“What are you doing?” asked the can of green beans. “Stop pushing me.”
Brown Nose jumped back from the can. He didn’t know he could talk to inanimate objects, until now. “Sorry,” said Brown Nose, “I never met a living can of green beans before.”
“Yeah?” said the can, “Well that isn’t the last crazy thing you’re going to find in this house, I can tell you that.”
“What do you mean?” asked Brown Nose.
“You’ll see,” answered the can.
“I don’t want to see,” Brown Nose yelled, “I want to get out of here.”
Brown Nose turned and ran for the stairs. He jumped up them, taking them 4 at a time. When he reached the door at the top, it slammed shut on him.
“Now we got you,” said the door, “you aren’t getting out of here that easy.”
“Let me out!” Brown Nose exclaimed while he was slamming into the door with his antlers.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” said the door, “We just want to talk to you.”
“Talk to me about what?” asked Brown Nose, who was calming down a little.
“About what’s outside right now, pounding on the roof,” answered the can from across the room.
“What do you mean?” asked Brown Nose, “Its just snow, I was out in it earlier.”
“Well, let us introduce ourselves to each other and then we can talk about it,” said the can. “My name is Can and the guy over there who stopped you from running off is Door.
“I’m Brown Nose.”
“Ok, now that we know each other, we can tell you what is outside. You guys call it snow. The two-legged creatures who used to live in this house called it that too. We know it by a different name. They’re called land leeches. They come down every so often and terrorize the inhabitants of this area. If you’ve eaten within half an hour of being around them, you’re fine.”
“That’s why I was okay when I was outside earlier? asked Brown Nose. “I had just eaten some berries.”
“That’s why,” answered Can. “They are very dangerous when in groups. They start falling down on top of you. They will stick to you and you’ll get colder and colder. They may melt and disappear to begin with, but more will keep coming. They’ll make you want to sit down or lay down to hide from them.. Never do that, because you won’t be getting up. They come in swarms and they come to kill. Many creatures have been taken by them.”
“What should I do?” asked Brown Nose, “How can we survive such horrible creatures?”
“Just stay in here with us until they leave,” said the door,  “I’ll let you keep checking every so often to see when they’re gone. They’ll disappear soon, they always do.”

Not too long after that, the land leeches stopped falling from the sky. Brown Nose said goodbye to Can and Door. There were little spots of white, where the land leeches still held their ground, but Can told him that they couldn’t do any harm with so few troops. Brown Nose was changed that day. He was careful not be outside after they started coming down. Land leeches could steal the life of even the strongest elk. Caution will save you from the land leeches; be wary and don’t stay too long outside.