When making a puzzle, one doesn’t usually think about how many challenges will have to be overcome. Well, we had our challenges with this one. This beautiful “Bull Moose” artwork by Robert Bateman had been chopped into 500 little puzzle pieces. I had been keeping it safe in my closet for a number of years, waiting for the right moment to put it all together.

My son Lorenzo pulled it out of the closet and said he’d like to complete the puzzle with us (my husband Cupp and I). The guys said, “We can finish this in a couple of hours, no problem!” I had my doubts. I hadn’t done a big puzzle like this for years. I remember them taking hours or days to complete. Puzzle-making is fun and relaxing. We would work as a team!

I cleared off the kitchen table. We got at it and found the light that was shining down over the kitchen table was too bright, so we had to find something to filter the glare bouncing off the pieces. I tried a pink sunbrella, but the pink tinge over the puzzle made it to hard to see. I tried another one,  but it was orange –– same problem. We thought something white would be best, so I found a white sheet. That worked fine, but the sheet wrapped around the light looked quite strange!

We ate a couple of snacks, and I had a big glass of water. Finding pieces that fit together was a bit of a challenge. We started with the border. We looked for the pieces with the flat sides. Sometimes it seemed like forever before we found pieces that fit together. One time when I found a good fit, I declared, “Win!” That became our signal when something fit.

Unfortunately, I knocked my glass of water over onto the puzzle! Now we had water all over the pieces. We had to quickly sop up the mess. Then we noticed as the water penetrated into some of the pieces they started to come apart. Oh no! Now we needed to glue some of them back together. This wasn’t going very well.

The puzzle-making adventure seemed to be going slower than we had anticipated. I was getting a bit tired of it all and went to sit down on the couch. I noticed our pup Berkeley chewing on something. I got closer to her, and realized it was a piece of the puzzle! Oh no! Now we have some pieces that need to be glued together AND a piece that is chewed. This is getting a bit ridiculous!

A half-hour later, Cupp told me “We are getting close to the end, you may want to come and help us finish it up!” I went over to see how far they had gotten, and I noticed there was a piece missing from the moose’s nose. I scanned the table looking for it. I couldn’t see it anywhere. I told them “We won’t be able to finish this puzzle if we don’t find this missing piece.” We figured it may have fallen onto the floor. I got down on my hands and knees, using the light from my cell phone, and I couldn’t see it anywhere. I started to worry that perhaps Berkeley ate it. I started looking in places she may have brought it, like her bed or her favourite carpeted area, and nope. Not there. I said, “Maybe it’s still in the bag.” So, I dug into the garbage and checked the bag. Nope, not there. Now I am convinced that Berkeley ate it. Oh no! Now we have an incomplete puzzle with pieces that need to be glued together and a piece that is chewed!

I eventually went to bed and woke up in the morning to find the puzzle done, with the glued pieces, the chewed piece, and the missing piece. It was a puzzle-making activity that didn’t quite go the way we had planned. It was fun, nonetheless!

Angela G. Gentile