Snow Rollers and Bear Sausage

The mercury is dipping down below zero this evening and Friday was the coldest recorded yet this winter, or so I was told by a clerk at Trader Joe's in South Hadley, MA. I went there with a friend to do my monthly/bi-monthly shopping. We stopped in Amherst to have lunch at a pan-Asian place, delicious "tea rolls" and noodle soup, hot Vietnamese coffee. We got back just in time to pick up her girls at the bus stop--just down the hill from their house. My friend's two daughters and another girl are the only ones left on the bus by the time it less than a mile or so away from the school. It is poignant to see only three little figures on the big yellow bus as it reaches the top of Depot Road next to an old town garage, the kind that looks like it once held carriages, or a snow roller like one in the photo.

Thursday night when it was so windy our chimes were ringing like crazy and clanking against the house, just after I arrived home from a brisk walk with the dog, I heard a loud crashing sound on the roof on the western side of the house. Sure enough, a big limb had fallen from the old maple tree, which the former owner couldn't bring herself to have cut down (and we couldn't either--it is so much a part of the house and its surroundings, and even its weakened state still has the most wonderful canopy of leaves that shades the house in the summer). It appeared to have bounced off the roof and most of it fell on the ground and the largest part got stuck in the crotch of the tree. Some of the branches fell on our cable line and so we lost TV, but more importantly, our phone line. Our cell phone doesn't work out here, but my neighbor's, thankfully, does and she was kind enough to let us use it.

Today, Saturday, Kim and Rick came over to survey the tree situation. They are a wonderful couple who have helped us with our roof, siding, painting, supplying firewood, etc. Once we all took a good look at the the tree, we realized it probably needs to come down. Also, Rick went on the roof and discovered some holes and a bit of damage here and there. Yikes. The maple is clearly too fragile and precariously near all kinds of utility lines. Perhaps phone or electric company will take it down for free? We'll see. Meanwhile, Kim and Rick collected up all the branches and cut up the wood on the ground with a chain saw and neatly stacked it for us.

Then they came inside with their young son, who'd been asleep in the car, and had coffee. They are a handsome couple (she looks like she could have been a Playboy bunny) and unbelievably hard-working. Kim also details cars and sells Avon. They hunt deer and bear and store the meat in freezers for the winter. Along with the produce from their garden, they are very self-sufficient. They are caretakers of a big old house in Wilmington on hundred and twenty acres and frequently see bobcats, "coydogs" (as they call them--close to coyotes, I think), and two different momma bears with cubs. This fall, Kim spotted two large bucks in the backyard. She told the kids to stay inside and went out and shot it herself and dragged it a hundred feet or so by herself. She attempted to begin to clean the carcass, but decided, once she succeeded in getting the knife in its sturdy belly and trying to remove the innards, that she needed Rick's help. We told them about the turkeys in our backyard and they said that one is allowed to shoot two a season (I think) and recommended having them deep-fried, whole. I was hard-pressed to imagine Paul shooting anything, and I do like the idea of getting one's own meat, but in the end, we are artist-sissies, I guess. They said they'd bring us some bear sausage sometime--delicious, they explained, lighter tasting than you would imagine.