Fragments From Floyd

I am enduring meteorologically-induced bachelorhood this weekend. Nannette of the North Subarued out of here at noon today in three inches of snow and I expect her back about this time (dark-thirty) on Sunday. A winter storm, you ask? No, a mere "winter weather advisory", meaning "it's coming and it won't be pretty." Sleet, freezing drizzle and winds up to 55 mph are expected over the next 24 hours. And T-dog and I will enjoy it together, just the two of us guys. I just fixed leftover rice and chicken for supper, after a lunch of chicken and rice. We WILL clean out the leftovers from the freezer in the next two days, won't we Tsuga buddy?

As for the dog, he had forgotten that he experienced one winter already, though admittedly as a youngish pup. So when the flakes started falling yesterday, he was mesmerized. It started after dark, and since it was our first snowfall of the season, we were mesmerized too. Ann and I and stepped out onto the back porch to watch the flakes fall in the light of the floods on the corner of the house. Well the dog went bonkers! It took us a minute to figure out what he was up to, running this way and that, stopping, pouncing, digging.

Tsuga's world is not like the one we humans live in, you see. In the summertime, the butterflies tormented him. Well, no, not the butterflies themselves, but their shadows. He chased their shadows frantically on sunny days, never looking up to see the creature that made them. And when and where he lost track of any given shadow, he began digging furiously, knowing the thing had burrowed into the earth just there. And it's the same with that darned snow. The shadows of the flakes falling last night were disappearing all around him, and he was going in after them!

Later, before bedtime, we took a walk down the road with the snow falling. There is a quiet unique to falling snow. And the creek, running under ice, has a sound altogether different to its summer self. Visual memory: the dog in his motion-activated collar of flashing red lights. Ann and her catalog finds. This one, I'll have to say, makes for some psychedelic walks at night, especially against the falling red snow! Dude!

And while we're on the subject of wifely catalog purchases: she wanted a powerful light so we could see the deer in the pasture at night. Came in the mail last week. Is a million candle-power strong enough for you? This is true! Yes, you need a shoulder harness to carry the thing, but it flat throws a light. By spring, I expect all of the wildlife that ventures within a quarter mile of this death ray will suffer retinal burns. Once zapped by this ray-gun, blinded squirrels will jump from limbs into nothing but empty space. Rabbits will leap into solid sod, unable to tell it from a whole in the ground. Deer will run full speed into large oak trees and owls will fly into the side of the barn. We'll be excommunicated for sure from the Friends of Wildlife.

Meanwhile, for some odd reason, the old Statler Brother's song keeps looping in my head.

Countin' flowers on the wall That don't bother me at all Playin' solitaire till dawn with a deck of fifty-one Smokin' cigarettes and watchin' Captain Kangaroo Now don't tell me I've nothin' to do