TGIS ... Thank God It's Snowing

It's Friday, but one can forget the, oh, so mundane "TGIF" salutation on this glorious Friday.  For today in Central New York, it's all about its long forgotten cousin "TGIS"... Thank God Its Snowing!  Oh, and it has been so so long. 

Syracuse usually secures between 100 to 200 inches of snow a year. We pride ourselves on so little, but Syracuse Basketball and 20 feet of snow will make our chests swell with honor.

Yet, this year has been different.  No, not different in the way of Lady Gaga or the duck billed platypus.  We've had no snow to speak of this winter.  In mid January of 2012 and up until today (Friday the 13th), this winter has only blessed us with a mere pittance of a wimpy dusting of snow ... for the whole winter.  Now if it seems to you that I'm one of those odd frozen ducks who loves the white frozen happiness that falls so gently from the heavens... I'm sure it was a lucky guess.

Yes, Al Gore's Global Warming has reared it's ugly head in Central New York.  The shame of it all.  We water skied the week before Halloween.  We jogged in early December in tee shirts and shorts.  The horses have been caked in mud from what seemed like the never ending Spring. This has been the first green Christmas since Nixon was not a crook.
But today, Friday the 13th, behold the eternal beauty of snow.  We've had close to a foot of the hardened H2O today and more to come tomorrow, the 14th.   Yes, we're talking the proverbial "Winter Wonder Land" and "The Luster of mid-day of objects below"

We can make snow angels, snow men, snow caves, snow balls and snow forts like we were once again 10 years old with our frosted wool mittens barely able to bend in the subzero arctic cold. 

We can trudge to the mail box watching our foot prints form deep craters in the alien like land ... and then carefully trace our own foot steps back as if to hide from the hounds sniffing the scent of our trail.

We can feel the cold pinching our rosy cheeks like an over affectionate grandma on holiday schnapps binge.

The horses can dance, play and roll in the snow and survive perfectly cleansed, except for the odd little icicles that dangle from their whiskers.

Yes, I love the snow.  Yes, I'm a little different.  No, not like Lady Gaga.

White Out in Orange Land

In addition to being our horses indentured servants, we're also slaves to our passion for Syracuse University basketball. Last Saturday, the Orangemen were away playing Louisville. For the week prior to the game, our anticipation was building as we'd not beaten Louisville away in close to a decade.

However, our dreams of victory were seemingly squashed within milli-seconds of the tip off as the result of some insane 3 point shooting by the enemy Cardinals from Kentucky. Rick Pitino, the Louisville coach stood smugly on sideline while Syracuse's coach, Jim Boheim, tried to calm his team by screaming profanity at them (I'm sure he's warm and fuzzy on non-game days). Unfortunately, Syracuse was down by about 20 points by half time.

When the second half began, I happened to glance up quickly from the TV to check on the horses outside in the pasture and noticed that it had started snowing lightly and that there was a slight wisp of a breeze. They seemed content and my attention turned quickly back to ESPN.

Then something magical began to happen. Ever so slowly, Syracuse, with some wild three point shooting of it's own, clawed its way back into the game. Down 20 ... became down 17 ... down 13 ... to about down 9 or 10 with 3 or 4 minutes to go.

During a commercial, I noticed that the wind had picked up incredibly (35 to 40 mile an hour winds the newspaper noted later) and the snow was coming down hard enough that it was getting harder to see the horses in the pasture.

Normally, we'd see the horses out in that nasty gale and we'd race with our coat tails hap-hazardly dangling behind us to bring them in. But ... but ... there was less than 4 minutes to go in a game that had momentum clearly moving in our direction. What we couldn't see in the pasture couldn't hurt us ... right? Through the gust of whiteness, it seemed that the the horses just hunkered down.

With 1:35 left in the game, Syracuse had pulled within 3 points. I was standing in the middle of the living room so I could see the horses with one eye and the game with the other.

Fortunately or unfortunately (depends on your perspective) the horses were in a complete white-out. You couldn't seem them at all. They quite literally had disappeared. Oh well... at least I had the game.

"They'll be fine. It's far too dangerous for us to go out and bring them in now," I said to my wife as the seconds passed in the game. Unfortunately, Syracuse's comeback also disappeared and they ended up losing the game 73 to 69.

As the final buzzer sounded, we quickly grabbed our coats and boots and ran to the pastures. By the time we reached them, the horses bay coats were plastered in whiteness and icicles dangled from their whiskers, like great Arctic explorers about to plant a flag at the North Pole.

Yes, some turn their horses out for the winter, but our pampered pansies were about as happy about being sacrificed for the "love of the game" as a turkey would be for the "love of the meal" on Thanksgiving day.

Bobbie (the pony) had an incredible look of disdain and as if he were thinking, "Well, I hope your happy ... because I'm @#&@ing mad you stupid &@*#." Yes, he has a bit of a trash mouth. He's also a bit more warm and fuzzy when it's not game day.

While we had a bit of February thaw earlier in the week and one could actually see some grass, in spots, poking through the snow yesterday. Today is once again game day and the winds have picked up again to 50 mph (plus). Syracuse plays Rutgers at home at 4:00 pm and the horses are sitting warmly in their stalls. We don't want to risk Bobbie's wrath again.

There's a Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On!

The schools here were a little quick on the draw this past week. For Tuesday, the weatherman had been predicting 8 to 12 inches of snow for the day. We got a call at 5:45 am that school was canceled. Only problem was ... it was a little bit like drinking flat soda. You anticipate one thing and you get another... no fizz ... no snow.

Despite the lack of snow, there was a bit of excitement that day. My wife was walking horses out to the pasture and happened to look into the garage. As she walked by, she noticed that one of the empty grain bags by the trash can was standing straight up, shaking violently and inexplicably. She called for my 17 year old son who, anticipating a "mini-me" salsa dancer or perhaps a steroid laced mouse, tipped the bag over by tapping it with a shovel. The wild bag shaker was neither a mouse nor Charo, rather it was watermelon sized possum.

Possums are nocturnal and normally won't come out during the day unless it's too cold, at night, during the winter to secure food (yes, I love the info you can find on the Internet).

When the bag was tipped, the possum came running out of the bag like the Steelers front line towards my wife who was standing just out side the garage. She screamed running away from the possum. The possum, stopped on a dime, screamed on the inside like a horror movie heroine and decided not to leave the garage. The Possum, clearly shaken, curled up in a ball and ...decided to play ... well ... possum, just playing dead.

My son decided to leave it alone to see if it would depart on its own and took off to his girlfriends house. The possum did eventually leave the garage, but circled the house like Kujo waiting to disembowel it's next victim. Possum rarely get rabies (yes, that Internet thing).

It made its way onto our deck and decided to hang out by out back door, apparently, wanting to enter our warm home like a proper rodent would.

My wife, trapped by the deranged rodent, made the ultimate tactical error ... she called me for my advice. I quickly responded, "Cool, did you get a picture." She didn't. I told her to grab a whistle and scare it. She grabbed a whistle out of the junk drawer, ran upstairs, as I suggested, to the bathroom window and blew as hard as she could to frighten Franken-Possum-Stein away.

My advice was as useless as it always is ... as upon hearing the screeching whistle, the possum did what possums do and once again ... played possum (who knew that wasn't a myth).

The only thing the whistle blowing accomplished was spook the horses in the pasture into a wild frenzy and irritate my wife. At that point I thought it best to play possum too.

Fifteen minutes later the possum left on it's own... probably on its way to its girl friend's house.

The Fence Eating Snow Drift

No, we didn't get today's coastal snow storm that dumped another foot or so onto New York City, about five hours away. "Near Miss" was how they described it on the local news like we'd avoided a mammoth iceberg headed for our unsinkable ship.

Don't you worry about us "snow deprived" folks in Central New York though. To-date we've now been blessed with 110 inches of snow this season.

The photo to the left was taken of our hungry fence eating snow drift. Don't get too close or you'll be buried up to your neck before you can say, "Hey, isn't that a fence eating snow dri..."

Yes, the Central New York sky continues dropping snow as fast as the little snow angels can make it. If it falters for a day or two, the sky is quick to reply, "Don't worry, I'll make more." My son has had six snow days so far (no, he's not complaining) and we still have February, March and probably some April snow days to come.

While it may sound like I'm whining slightly about the snow, I should mention that it's actually been incredibly beautiful -- "a winter wonderland" is how we describe it. And ... the snowboarding on the slopes has been heavenly with day after day of amazing powder.

Of course, back on the whining front ... earlier in the week my son's school was delayed two hours and the horses were in all day becomes of -13 degree temperatures, before the hint of wind chill. Needless to say that water buckets were frozen.

However, it's hard to complain around here as somebody always has it worse. I guess a few hours North of here in Saranac Lake New York they had -39 degrees that morning. I'll keep my frost-bit whining to myself.

The Lords of the Winter Hay Stomp

On blustery winter days, turn out involves leading horses to the pastures while trudging our heavy insulated boots through deep tundra like snow, defrosting frozen lead rope snaps by exhaling warm air onto them and frequently fixing wind blown blankets (not unlike folding multiple flags in a wind tunnel). As the last remnants of the sleeping autumn grass hides under layers of frozen water (aka snow), we have to lug hay to the pastures via the kids old red plastic sleds.

There is a wild dance of sorts involved with the turn out this time of year. We scatter flakes of hay around the pastures and then walk each horse out one by one. Shane stomps out first and has his only temporary choice of the vast universe of hay piles. Evelyn dances out next and despite a variety of unoccupied piles will, with little variation, go for the dried timothy pile that Shane is munching on ... who quickly is forced to move to one of the other hay piles on a safer side of the pasture.

Bobbie is then turned out next which disrupts the temporary equine equilibrium. With ears pinned way back, he immediately goes for the pile occupied by Evelyn, forcing her to the flakes being munched on by Shane, forcing Shane to yet another still unoccupied flake pile.

Periodically, Bobbie, with a strand of timothy dangling from the side of his muzzle, like a tango dancer with a rose, will inexplicably and suddenly change his hay preference and begin the tango once again forcing Evelyn then Shane to rotate around the pasture like an uneasy violent tango.

Dion and Monte have their own pasture and there own variation of the dance. Monte heads into the pasture first and will gallop quickly around the hay, bucking with all four feet off the ground. Monte then find the deepest snow drift he can find and drops and spin like a break dancer (see photo of break dancing Dion and Monte-- which doesn't do it justice) until he's properly floured into prehistoric sized powdered donut. Seemingly shaken by the sudden coldness on his body, he jumps up, bucks and dances around until he too settles on a pile of hay.

When it's Dion's turn, he will tow whoever dares lead him out to the pasture, with the strength of a Budweiser Clydesdale (it's similar to snow skiing tied to a pack of elephants). When he quickly is let loose in the pasture, Dion will breeze around like the former race horse he was, whipping Monte and the hay piles into a frosty tornado until the storm dance abruptly stops and heads drop to the hay carnage strewn about the pasture.

If anyone of the equine Arthur Millers misses a step or stumbles, not to worry, they'll get another chance to perfect their craft tomorrow.