Tracks in the snow

We're getting the cold weather that the forecasters predicted--zero degrees with a windchill of minus 25. The wind is howling, the snow is blowing, and it's a fit day for only penguins and polar bears. Hope neither of them is what is hiding beneath my front porch.

When I opened the door to get the Sunday newspaper, instead of its being right against the door, as it usually is, it was near the steps on the far side of the porch. I don't know what time it was delivered, but at 9 a.m., it was covered with blown snow. The deliverer's foot prints were semi-filled with snow.

Later, about one p.m., I looked out from the upstairs window, and there were neatly placed tracks leading to the edge of the porch. At that edge, there is a little hole beside the steps where animals can--and do--get in. I've seen rabbits and chipmunks. This could have been a cat (I hope not, though!). Of course, it could be a skunk or a groundhog. Who knows? I'm not going to go poking with a stick, that's for sure. But I do worry that whatever is under there could be hungry and starving. I don't want to find a dessicated body later in the year, and I certainly don't want to smell a decomposing one! But without knowing what's under there, I have no idea what food to put out. It would be covered with snow shortly anyway.

My cousin Mary has emailed and let me know that her husband's mouth cancer has been surgically treated. It wasn't as extensive as they'd feared. She was enjoying a few days off, now that it was all over, and to relax from the ordeal, she was lying on her porch swing, enjoying the birds. But that's Louisiana for you. It's probably relatively spring-like there already. Darn it.

On a completely unrelated note, as I was going through the Sunday circulars, I noted a sale on a wireless mouse. I have a wireless mouse, so I wasn't interested in buying one, but for the first time, I noticed that the thing looks like a bodiless vagina. Okay, call me a dirty old woman, but if Georgia O'Keefe can see vaginas within flowers, why can't I see a vagina in something that comes equipped with labia and a clitoris? Not all mouses (not "mice"?) look alike, of course, but most of them share a similar style and form. So--is this form following function? Is the human hand just made to adapt itself to such a shape? Or did some dirty old man out there design the mouse this way? If so, he's probably been sitting back, wondering for a long time why no one has noticed it before. Or maybe everyone else HAS noticed it, and I'm slow on the uptake--and one of the few who would dare to talk about it?

Maybe I ought to get my head out of the gutter. Still, I see what I see. And I'll never again be able to un-see it. Dr. S.