These Really Cold Days

These are really, really cold days.  When the term ‘polar vortex’ takes over nightly weather reports, all creatures great and small, winged, hooved and footed find themselves in the unforgiving grip of brutal extreme weather. For the past week, our outside thermometer has registered early morning temperatures of -8 degrees below zero and daytime highs in the single digits. potentially pipe-bursting cold with windchills in the minus teens.  This is the kind of cold that reminds us why bears hibernate in arctic regions and humans make life-changing decisions to move to regions where skies are blue in February and temperatures below 50 are rare.

by Cathy Salter

These sub-zero days, I wrap up from head to toe and head outside to feed the birds, squirrels and rabbits.  My fur-lined hat has side flaps that snap under my chin.  I am dressed in triple layers from neck to high, fur-lined boots that almost reach my knees.  I’m gloved and wearing a plaid fleece coat with a wool scarf wrapped around my mouth and nose.  I’m almost invisible.  I’m on a mission to refill the suet feeder and add thistle feed to the tube hanging below one end of the clothesline T-post where birds line up like jets on an airport runway for their turn at the feeders.  

~ Read the rest in today’s Journal ~