You’ve probably heard by now that the midwest was blanketed in snow yesterday. A blizzard, they call it. But up here, in the Great Great North, we have had snow for days so I didn’t really understand all the crazy hub-bub. Frankly I had worn wary of the snow days ago. Here’s what it does all day: snow, wind, snow, wind, cloudy, wind, snow. Sun? Where Art Thou?

Anyway it snowed and snowed. And I thought for sure, Snow Day, right? Wrong. Here in the Great Great North they only call Snow Days when there is NO snow but enough cold temperatures to make heating the Children an expensive endeavor. Since snow is usually accompanied by warmer freezing temperatures and not the sub-zero variety, no snow day for us.

That sort of lulled me into a false sense of confidence, one might say. It’s safe for busses? It’s safe for ME!

I had an errand to do about an hour away. I had already put it off one day so I figured yesterday was as good of time as any. I gunned it out of my (completely unshoveled) driveway, showing off my Mad Driving Skillz, and headed out on my way. I decided to ask Dharma (my car - she gets a cool hippy name, in case you wonder, because she is a Prius. Now it makes sense, right?) to take me on non-highway streets. I do this sometimes. I like to stir things up, make things different. It’s sort of my trademark if a person could have such a thing. I’m a Thing-Stirer(tm).

So I take a nice country road that eventually turns into a dirt country road. I think “Great! Now I don’t have to worry about traffic and those pesky dangerous idiots with SUVs who drive 100 mph because “they can” only to wind up dead a mile up the road when their super-safe SUV rolls over in the median or another conscientious Prius driver, for example”. This is what I think.

Then I hit this steep decline and it is a little scary like a roller-coaster without tracks that I have to drive. I go slow. I make it down without dying. But not ONCE does it occur to me that what goes down must come up. A half mile later I come upon a very steep incline, naturally. And of course Dharma flips me the bird as she careens backward down the incline. Cocky from my easy driveway exit, I try and try again. Then I start to panic. Images of being towed up the hill cross my mind. I call my husband who thinks maybe he might pack our mini-van with kids and come keep me company so we’ll both be stuck. On a whim I decide to turn around and head back where I came from and THANKFULLY that hill that felt so steep before was not enough to conquer sweet Dharma.

However, what almost DID conquer sweet Dharma were the 40 deer that decided to surround my vehicle at 1pm in the afternoon. Having never been in this precise predicament,  I wasn’t sure if I should stop, drive, honk or call 911! For a brief instant I wondered if I had died and was perhaps being escorted to heaven by a herd of deer because being surrounded by 40 deer in the middle of the day doesn’t happen.

But now I understand. The thing is? I’m an Animal Whisperer. Now I know. The Animals sense me and they come.

This one time I was stopped at a red light on the busiest and most dangerous intersection in my city (and the one that accounts for more accidents than any other in my county). A road with 5 lanes, at least. 55 mph. A major thoroughfare is what I’m trying to say. I noticed something odd. A mouse. In the middle of the intersection. Eating. I’m pretty sure most people don’t see mice in the middle of the road.

And then it happened again. And hence you might think for a second that this is the mouse’s natural territory, let me assure you by the fact that I witnessed the last poor mouse’s demise-via-car-tire (not mine, thanyouverymuch), it was not the same mouse. But it was the same intersection, a different day.

Last year around this time we looked into the backyard and a coyote was on our lake. This is Not Normal.

And let’s not forget last summer when we went to the nature center with the kids and happened up not one but two deer close enough to touch who did not even blink an eye (literally) at our presence. They were sort of like “There you are. Finally. I’ve been waiting” (see photo) and we were sort of like “Let’s get the *(#% out of here!”.

One time we were driving through a popular suburban city and saw a peacock walking along the road. The same day we also saw ostriches and fawns. It was not a normal day.

Once we were living smack dab in the middle of suburbia, right off I-75. We were getting the kids ready for school and happened to look out into our backyard and there, staring us dead in the eyes, was a huge deer. This isn’t the kind of neighborhood were deer roam. Ever. We weren’t near a forest. But there he was in our backyard. That time we called 911.

It all started about 8 years ago. Tony and I were driving home from Chicago in separate cars. We were talking via walkie-talkie (pre-cellphone days) and I was a little sleepy when I spotted something in a field. It looked like a giant kangaroo. I swear to this day that is what I saw.

And ever since then, the animals, they come to me.

So while I maneuvered my way through the deer (I ended up decided on a combination of stopping and driving), I had a thought. I wonder if an Armadillo will come to see me in Texas? That might be cool.

I’ll talk my Animal Whisperer tendencies with me to Texas but I’ll leave the snow behind for all you crazies who think this is fun. Because it’s not. It sucks. It’s cold. And windy. And there are Drifts. And Shoveling. And Broken Backs and Broken Skulls and Salt and Pot Holes and Angry Drivers and - ugh - SUVs and No Snow Days or Snow Days. I will leave all of it. Gladly. Good riddance. I wish I could take the deer with me, though.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 10:39 pm and is filed under Nature, Venting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.