A Mystery

A bit of January thaw has reduced the snow cover, up here at Fish in a Barrel Pond, to nearly nothing. This is not such a bad thing, though, as I found that shovel I lost before Christmas, when I plowed it deep into a snow bank.

When I was in town the other day, the giant piles of snow in the parking lots were gone but I could tell where they had been by the leaves and other debris the plows had swept up and deposited. Debris like a $20.00 bill.

Score.

But every now and then I find some thing I just can’t explain, like this mouse. Did a predator drop him here? He doesn’t look beat-up enough to me so I don’t think that’s it. There are no tracks around him, either, but I have a theory.

There are no tracks because a hard, freezing rain fell all day yesterday. Everything for miles around was covered with a cold glaze, including my dooryard, which I discovered while skipping to the barn in the rain. I don’t know why, but it seems to be an annual rite for old Quill to slip, fall, hit his head and get frozen to the ground during an ice storm, and even this morning, after the sun came out, I had trouble. I wasn’t the first person to spot this little mouse, but I wish I was because everyone said it looked just like me yesterday afternoon, on my back with my legs in the air and my eyes closed.

I think the mouse fell on the ice, knocked himself out and died of hypothermia.