New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

First skim ice of the winter today, but a warm up is due

Tuesday 11/21/2006

Well today I saw my first real glimpse of winter. When I left this morning for a speaking engagement in Derry there actually was a skim of ice on the small ponds along the way. In fact a little ice persisted until at least mid day. But the warm-up expected for the rest of this week will reset the calendar a few weeks I bet.

My family did get away for a week-long vacation in sunny warm Florida all of last week. We joined our daughter on a trip that included three days at a conference for her so we could watch and enjoy our two granddaughters. And that we did. For me the highlight of the week was our morning wake-up call by our soon to be three year old grand daughter Katie. How wonderful it is to be wakened by her sweet little voice each morning as she made her way to our section of the unit in Orlando. My son even made it down for a few days of our adventure.

Oh yes we had grand days at Disney, the MGM attraction, Epcot and even a day in the 80's at Sea World. Perfect for a Shamu splash for my son-in-law and Katie.

Then there was the morning ritual of feeding the dozen plus mallards in the pond behind the building. A sprawling complex of over 1,700 units. A giant carp kept the ducks at bay on occasion. It was close to four feet long with a huge girth. A strange looking turtle would move into the feeding frenzy as well.

Beyond the wonderful family memories a few other things are of note. I still am in shock over the daily highway fatalities. In fact the first morning they were simply intertwined with the traffic reports on the local channel. " A high speed impact with a fatality on such and such highway is causing a delay" And there were a couple of such reports the first morning with more detail on the evening news. There were at least two to three fatalities every day in the Orlando area.

Friday we raced across the Bee Line Express way after Amy got out of her conference at noon just in time for me to witness a first. I saw the launch of a Delta II rocket which was taking a new GPS satellite into orbit. The thing literally streaked into the heavens. We were parked on the edge of the Indian River where an outward glance revealed numerous fish activity. Oh come back stripers!

We mostly traveled a few miles each day to the local attractions and I saw little highway wildlife mortality as I remember from years past. Not a deer, armadillo or cow as I have seen in past visits. Roses were in bloom every where and selected other things. Holiday decorations were numerous as was the Christmas music. Kind of weird, palm trees and Christmas music.

When I got home late Sunday evening I found my rain gauge filled to 3.6 inches. Sure enough the tide was back in to the corn field below the house flooding it yet again. My son says he caught a garter snake last Saturday. Land sakes, a snake out in late November. Winter sure seems to be kept at bay despite the brief introduction this morning and another cold night tonight promising more skim ice on Wednesday morning. The ground remains pretty warm so even if we get a bit of snow, it will melt quickly. So far it sure is looking more like a repeat of last winter.