Winter has arrived in Michigan, and with it come certain expectations. Michiganders know there will be grey slushy days and days so beautiful they remind us what a privilege it is to live here. Children will build snowpeople, then head for the sledding hills. Hockey players will clear rinks on the pond. Dogs will cavort, pushing their snouts through the snow like vacuum cleaners, breathing in the scents it holds. All of these are givens, but there will be surprises as well.
Last winter held three surprises that stick in my mind as this winter’s snow falls, all of them observed while walking the dog.
The first was something on a sidewalk on Lexington. The walk was shoveled, so I could see the object, whatever it was, from a distance. It was smallish, clearly organic, and familiar. Surely it couldn’t be what I thought it was–a cicada husk. Yet there it was in all its wonder, the brown hollow exoskeleton of a cicada, with the split down the back where the nymph had pulled itself out. Finding one is always a treat. But it’s a summer treat. Cicadas are a summer phenomenon. Where had this husk been before it appeared on the winter sidewalk? Clinging by its vacated legs to the bark of a tree? How could it have lasted so long? I don’t know, but it was a gentle surprise.
The second surprise happened in a secluded spot just north of the Sugarbush woods. A subcontractor for DTE had a crew out scouting for places that tree limbs might interfere with power lines. The day was shockingly cold. Crunching through the snow with the dog, I had my head down and so thoroughly swaddled in hat, hood, and scarf that only my eyes showed. I felt sorry for the men who were out working. I’d be back indoors inside the hour, but they faced a day outside.
Suddenly, all three men started to laugh. I glanced over to find one of them down on his back in the snow, waving his arms and legs to make a snow angel. The dog and I waited to see if the other two burly, middle-aged, Carhartted men would join him in snow angel-ing. They did not. The vignette, which only the dog and I saw, has amused with me ever since.
The third surprise revealed itself one day as dog and I were headed home along Nixon. A Canada goose honked overhead. The supply of Canada geese here is more than ample, and they talk to each other wherever they go, so Michiganders are somewhat jaded about hearing them. Even so, if you don’t look up at the sound, you might miss a V of sixty-some of these big, muscular birds, which is a sight to behold. I looked up. Not a goose in the sky. How could that be? More honking above us. No geese in the sky. Or on the pond along Dhu Varren. By now I was really curious. Where could the honker be?
Then I spotted it. Standing on the steeply pitched roof of a three-story residence. Geese do not stand around on roofs. They fly or swim or walk or sit. In the air, on the water, or on the ground. There is nothing in the Canada goose contract that involves perching on roofs. They are not equipped for it. A wood duck, maybe. Wood ducks have claws on their webbed feet and routinely hang out on tree limbs. Canada geese, no claws.
Furthermore, what was up with the honking? The bird was alone up there on the shingles. As I watched, two more geese flew in and joined the first one on the roof. Apparently the honking had been an invitation to the penthouse. I haven’t seen any more roof-perching geese, before or since that day. It was just a winter surprise.
I wonder what surprises this winter holds.
15 January 2021