Snow: Nature's newspaper
February may be the shortest month, but in New England it packs the kind of weather that makes me think twice about my love of four seasons.
It has been snowing. A lot.
But the white stuff also provides the Great Reveal.
Here in the country, a new-fallen snow exposes what I suspect is going on most of the time but for which I usually have no proof – just a hunch based on a subtle sign here and there. Yet after a good snowfall, two things become obvious:
There are so many animals nearby that I may as well be living in a zoo.
There is so much traffic around my barn that it might as well be New York’s Grand Central Station.
Tracks. Are. Everywhere.
There are rabbit tracks and tracks of the opossum, pawprints of coyotes, tiny prints of squirrels scrabbling for the acorns they just know they hid somewhere around here months ago and the cloven hooves of deer nosing around for a few sprigs of grass under the ice. There are tracks that force me to surf the internet for clues because I can’t imagine what or who on Earth they are from.
Which begs the question – where is everyone going?
Snow is nature’s newspaper. It tells us everything that has been happening, but don’t normally notice. We might think of this land as ours, but there is enough forest and impregnable brush lining our property to provide plenty of room beyond the reach of humans for dens, holes and hidden places to curl up.
A nearby meadow abundant with faded grass shows multiple indentations where animals huddled together to get warm one recent night. Whether deer or a pack of coyotes I don’t know.
Because our spring-fed pond almost never freezes, in winter several pairs of ducks always come by and hang out. But several weeks ago a flock of about 80 geese evicted them, taking over the pond completely, apparently delighted to find open water. This has never happened before, and I wondered how long the big birds would stay. I watched them sleep at night, floating on the water and swimming in unison during the day.
I may as well be living in a zoo.
Then came a serious cold spell. Finally, inch by inch, the pond began to slowly freeze. The geese left in a huff, replaced, within hours, with our friends the ducks, who must have been waiting nearby for the larger birds to tire of the pond’s smaller confines. Yet only five ducks at first came back, not six.
There is endless drama in the country, and here was a mystery: The three feathered couples were suddenly two-and-a-half. Could one of the ducks have gotten hurt? Ducks are often monogamous, but could one couple have split up? This begs the question: Do ducks get divorced?
Finally, after a few days, the sixth duck joined the other five. Water that had become too small for scores of geese was plenty large enough for the six of them. The three couples had enough room in our now half-frozen pond and resumed swimming in circles, quacking and gossiping.
Speaking of gossip, the snow – and a video doorbell across the street – has revealed something I never knew about my cat Kiko, First of Her Name, Queen of the Barn. Kiko is gray and quite petite but has a big personality. She’s got swagger. When Pete insisted on bringing home two puppies three years ago, Kiko tried to make it work for a month but, eventually, said the feline equivalent of “Hell, no,” and moved out of the house and into the barn where I have my office.
She’s never left. She’s a solitary cat, and always has been, so I was surprised a few weeks ago at what the snow revealed.
There it was: the familiar paw prints of Kiko and much larger nearby paw prints of another cat. Those prints turned out to be the telltale signs of a black and white feline from across the street named Frankie, who is, apparently, a friend. Maybe a little more. The two of them have been caught hanging out together and grooming one another, the incriminating evidence spied with the help of my neighbor’s doorbell camera.
Well. Kiko has a social life. Who knew?
We’re expecting more snow later this week. Who knows what else the snow will reveal in its latest edition? Read all about it, as the saying goes.
When you mentioned that there was another set of paw prints next to Kiko's...I thought you were going to reveal that she had kittens. But finding out she has made a friend is equally delightful.
We have a family of foxes that play in my parent's front garden and it sets off the motion lights all the time. My dad says it's like a disco, the lights are constantly flashing on and off! Separately, we have a very large hedgehog in the garden who occasionally visits as well.
Winter is not my jam and this winter has been brutal. We are hunkering down for yet another snowstorm. This one is a Nor'easter which always does the most damage. We are dealing with over development and the local animals are being pushed out of their natural living places. During rutting season, our door alarm camera caught two deer . . um . . rutting in the middle of the street. I was embarrassed for them, poor dear deers. Climate change can have lots of unintended consequences.