WRITING IN THE DARK

WHITEOUT

It’s the darkest time of the year. 

I began writing this on December 9 and 10––the two days of heavy wet snow that blocked views of almost everything, mountains, trees, even our road––and that storm was followed by days, no, weeks, of shrouded grayness that weighed down the sky. A single sunny morning was an exception, soon forgotten.   The solstice was still nearly two weeks away.  All day long it looked like early evening.

Everything looked blurry in snow-fog and low clouds.

Much cheerier:  The same view, more or less, just before all the leaves fell.  

While we were away for Christmas the snow melted away in several days of warmth and fog. When the fog lifted and the sky cleared at last nearly all the whiteness had vanished.  The ground lay bare, awaiting 2015 to whiten up again.

More of the same

Nice as it was to see white everywhere, this wasn’t the kind of snow we welcomed.  Sure, it was attractive in the way it coated the trees as if sprayed on–although it would have been really beautiful had the sun shined on it, just once–and loaded the firs so heavily that they looked like the fir trees kids make around sandcastles on the beach by dripping wet sand into little peaks.  Firs seldom look that perfect naturally.  The snow load was a painful burden to other trees:  Higher up from here, in the mountains, you would have heard the crack of limbs and tree trunks for hours through a day and a   And, chances are, you could have been without electricity for as long as five days.  Even the Middlebury Snow Bowl had to close because of the lack of power. Forest trails were closed because of many broken, fallen and partially fallen trees making them dangerous or impassible.  Skinny and flexible trees, like birches, spent nearly the whole period bent over, without a thaw to release the pressure.  Tree torture.  In the valley damage was minimal, only the occasional broken branch. Clearing the white stuff, though, was dispiriting. 

Bent trees hang over Route 17 on the road to Sugarbush

The “here,” as in “nonewsfrom” was whited out, too.  I put it to a lingering aftereffect of our visit to Cambodia and Vietnam, Cambodia especially, where life is so much harder for so many, and where any actual “news” is likely to have a memorable impact on your livelihood, your world.  What happened here seemed trivial in comparison.  Hence, a mental kind of whiteout.  Or blackout, maybe.  

Or just a blank.

CONSIDERING ARMADILLOS

Where was I?  Oh right, the transformation of everything here from white to, well, kind of brown and greenish.  The snow vanished so quickly it was like pulling off a blanket and realizing someone was asleep underneath. Suddenly without cover, rodent trails were exposed everywhere, but most startlingly, near the pond.  Every spring warm weather reveals their wobbly pathways that used to be tunnels under the snow.  On the far side of the pond I had never noticed rodent signs before, and certainly not holes you could actually fall into. I checked the internet for likely culprits. 

Uncovered pathways near the pond

The Center for Wildlife Damage Management (who knew?) suggests one first look to see whether or not there actually is a hole.  Of course I knew there was a hole.  Holes.  That was the point.  Nevertheless, I read on. “If there is no hole and just a groove present, consider armadillos.” 

Okay.  

Next:  Look for a hole that may lead to a burrow.  Measure the hole.  Three inches or less (there were several of those) suggests chipmunk, crayfish (Really? Crayfish?),* ground squirrel, kangaroo rat, Norway rat, skunks, or voles.  Winnowing the list of those from other habitats leaves chipmunks (who prefer living under the bird feeder), skunks (not around in the cold, and even if they were, Skyler would notice), rats (unlikely; no grain lying around, plus they prefer chicken coops).  That leaves voles.

The really big trails and hole:  The tape gives a width of nine inches.  At top  is the frozen pond.

Then there are the big holes.  Holes larger than three inches suggest one consider: badger, river otter, prairie dog, fox, coyote, mountain beaver, or woodchuck.  Of course half these animals are western except for the coyote, fox, river otter and woodchuck.  Foxes and coyotes wouldn’t dream of denning near a house, much less a house with a dog.  It would be nice to have river otters, but unlikely, and a pond is not a river.   There is little doubt that the digger is a woodchuck.  On second thought, make that plural: woodchucks.  Woodchuck holes can be 8 inches wide.  Our holes are at least that.  For the past two years we were pretty certain a family of woodchucks lived under our patio.  Their burrow entrances would appear now and then amid the flowers as piles of dirt or stones excavated from under the cement.  Woodchucks had made homes in our suburban garden in Lexington, Massachusetts.  Woodchucks are everywhere.  I needn’t have bothered looking this up, for it should have been obvious.  (“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk,” remarked Henry Thoreau.)  Maybe they moved?  Or maybe this is another branch of the family.  It could explain why Skyler has occasionally been barking at night in that general direction.  He may not have even seen them as they were under the snow, but he very likely sensed that they were there, somewhere.  

Woodchuck, groundhog, whistle-pig.  (Woodchucks, when threatened wil make a whistling noise to alert fellow groundhogs.)  A major business recently built a factory in Middlebury to turn out Woodchuck Cider. The nearby town of Shoreham has a distillery that produces Whistle-Pig rye whiskey.  Another name for woodchuck is land beaver.  I like that one.

  

That's a woodchuck all right...

But the Whistle-Pig company appears to think a Whistle-Pig is a Pig

*Yes, crayfish do in fact burrow in the ground near water.  Their two-inch burrow openings are surrounded by a ring of mud.  But not here.