Weather Waifs

This weather is beyond puzzling. Just a little more than a week earlier we were able to celebrate finally that we'd received a snowfall sufficient to cover the bleak winter grey. With it came colder weather, but who cared? This is supposed to be winter after all, and with it comes cold temperatures and snow, lots of snow. Not this year. We did get out to enjoy the spectacle of fresh snow covering trees and lawns and roads and it lifted our spirits.

That was then, this is now, and since then the weather conditions shifted again and again and finally there was scant snow left, but plenty of ice on the trails in the ravine as the snow melted and overnight freezing compacted the melted snow into sheer sheets of ice. Moreover, we had heavy all-night rain last night, so whatever was left of lonely little bits of snow was encouraged to melt. We experienced a high of 8-degrees Celcius, some nice balmy winds and overcast skies.

Which led me this day to bag up some stale bread, along with what was left of a batch of peanut butter cookies and another of oatmeal cookies (my own baked goods, needless to say, not store-bought) to haul along to the ravine for placement in discrete areas where we know grey, red and black squirrels are wont to roam. Better by far to bring along peanuts, but that would come. I meant to buy some when doing the food shopping later today.

Thing is, I'd heard a news item about concerns expressed by local environmentalists. Because it's been so extraordinarily mild, animals which would normally go into hibernation (or in the case of the squirrel population, semi-hibernation) were waking up prematurely, feeling the onset of spring. Their body metabolisms speed up, and they go in search of food, scarce enough at this time of year. Hence the cookies.

Because of all that rain of last night and the encouragement of another melt, the creek and its tributaries were roiling with dark muddy rills of water, bouncing off the immersed logs and other detritus, sending a veritable storm of sound to our ears. We'd had to wear our cleats because despite the mild temperature, the ground remains semi-frozen and much of the trails are still ice-covered and dreadfully slippery.

Where the ice has managed to melt completely because in certain places the trail is open to the effects of the sun, along with the milder temperatures, the ground has relented from its deep freeze and has lapsed into inch-thick muck, and we squish through it. Because of the temperature inversion; the cold dark water rushing along the creek and the milder ambient temperature, there are veils of mist rising; an air of mystery to our surroundings.

It's somewhat mysterious to our little dogs why we're stopping now and again to carefully place bits and pieces of bread and cookies here and there. What peculiar behaviour; they scent the food and make directly for it, although we call them back. Those they manage to reach they sniff gingerly, experimentally, then decide to leave, after all. But for one sizeable piece of peanut butter cookie which Button declares to be hers and makes off with.

Tomorrow we'll return and bring a more suitable food offering for the little ravine denizens, a bag of unshelled peanuts.