ENOUGH SNOW TO TRACK A RABBIT--

Years ago a local confectioner, the late Scott Brown, used to make annual, snowfall predictions for the Mansfield area; specifically, how many of them would occur over the winter.

Any particular snow event would count only if it produced, yup, enough snow to track a rabbit.

I never learned where that measurement was taken but, Saturday, that criteria was met at my house for the second time this fall.

As that wintry blast was tapering off I noticed a friendly male Cardinal, Ohio's state bird by the way, perched in an evergreen bush near my front door.  This rascal's bright red color was not enhanced by editing software.  Can you imagine how proud he must have been?

I was glad it was him sitting out there and not me.  Temperatures dipped throughout that day to an overnight low in the upper teens.  

In spite of those polar conditions he and lots of his feathered pals were busy munching breakfast at my feeders the next morning, evidently oblivious to the cold that had me tucked into a heavy sweatshirt with the furnace working overtime and me still lighting candles for supplemental heat.

Yet, there they were flitting about without a shiver in sight with an average weight measured in fractions of an ounce for some species.

Humans are such wusses.