Snow

It has snowed so much and so consistently over the last few days that if I noticed a neighbor making a giant sled, a la Noah's Ark, I'd go over and try to make friends with him.

The ducks in my condo complex apparently don't mind the snow. They waddle around through the drifts and sleep along the snowy banks of the ice covered pond. Some kind soul hung a bird feeder in the yard outside my kitchen window. A gigantic tree blocks our view of the feeder, but we do see how the seed falls from the bird feeder and becomes a main food source for the neighborhood ducks. When the snow first started falling, I saw a duck face plant in the drifts on his way to the feeder. Now the trains of ducks have worn a little path from the the shoveled sidewalk through the drifts. When the snow first started, it took a while to get all our walks shoveled. My uncle came to visit us on the first day and exclaimed, "I couldn't find the path! I had to follow a goose in!"

In Sweden, the ducks never flew south for the winter. My friend, Mami, and I would walk out to the lake and feed them our stale bread. We would throw the bread out on the ice and watch the ducks slide around to get to it. We called them the "mighty ducks" and enjoyed those hockey games immensely. I think of Mami every morning as I drive to work past the icy pond and the ducks.