The March Hare: Winter '06
Issue 47

Every Little Bit • Knitting • Dignified Poncho • Cat House • Ask a Rabbit • Hey/Hay! • Roof Interview • Nature Corner

Upon Sara's and my return from several weeks of visiting family and friends out east a few weeks ago, it was clear winter had come in our absence. Our dog Isis had fluffed up to her full extent, seemingly as a result of the two weeks below freezing we'd just missed, but more likely due to the cold clues her body had started receiving much earlier. The warm-season transplants in our greenhouse had all died in the - 4[degree] nights, sure sign that the insulating curtains we plan on installing in the greenhouse for cold nights are a necessity if we want to protect tender plants through the winter.

Small rodents seeking insulation had already started their annual explorations of our house before we left, making maddening tracks and nests in our roof above the ceiling. Rodents have been with people in their dwellings (including at DR) as long as people have had dwellings, I'm sure, and I try to remember that when they scurry about in the night, but after all the work I put into getting that insulation into the house, I seem unable to accept their trampling and tunneling in it. We keep searching for entry points and sealing them, but still they find their way into the walls. I take it as a challenge to remind me I can't rest on my laurels after finishing our house. Humans build episodically, but nature and entropy work at a constant rate to break down resistance and recycle elements, and rodents are an agent sent to do the preliminary work of turning our house back into a mound of nutrients to be cycled into the landscape. To resist the trend takes work as constant as nature's.

In winter I return to my old dilemma of determining where humans are native, or ought to be. The point may be moot, given how widespread we are over the globe, but as an amateur naturalist, I always like to know which species are native and which are alien in a given place, so I can try to envision what a place might have looked like in its primeval state. Looking at the padding against winter's frigid temperatures that most creatures sport around here, I conclude that this isn't part of our native range.

Isis is fine here, sometimes choosing to stay outside at night even when the temperature is in the twenties or lower. Sporting the same strategy, a tawny fluffball of a fox crossed our path in our orchard last week as we returned from a walk. Our eponymous rabbits' thick fur clearly does the job, as they scare us on the paths in the darkest, coldest nights and scamper throughout the winter days no matter what the temperature. Sometimes we come across an unattached rabbit tail on one of our walking trails, and holding one is something like holding a piece of warmth. I know it is just my own warmth reflected efficiently in a bit of fur designed to do just that, but it is tempting to believe that the fur has some heat-producing properties of its own.

There is some relationship, I know, between body size and heating strategy. My father loves books, and since some of our interests overlap, he often sends me duplicates when he finds a newer edition. I'm amazed that it has only happened once, but in one case he repeated himself, sending me not one but three copies of a book named, "Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare." Clearly, he wanted me to read this book, and I'm embarrassed to say that I have yet to do so, but I do understand one of the basic theories discussed: larger animals have a lower surface area-to-volume ratio than smaller ones, so that they are better able to hold on to the heat they make. Think polar bears, wolves, Siberian tigers, woolly mammoths (once upon a time), elk, and other such creatures. Closer to home, I witness the cows standing in the fields across the road through subzero winter days and nights, and wonder how they survive it, despite my understanding of the principle. I'd, of course, be a frozen statue by morning if I tried weathering a subzero night in my native plumage.

Which brings me back to the wee rodents: lacking higher mass, they have to prepare insulated nests to burrow into in the winter. My walls are full of material put there to insulate, so they can make good use of it either by nesting in it, or by stealing bits of it to build nests elsewhere with. I do come across their nests outside every so often, and have yet to find any of my insulation in any of them, so at least they're not removing it. Perhaps I'll just assume they're paying the rent by bringing in more insulation, adding some cattail fluff, dried grasses, and milkweed fibers to help insulate my house while helping themselves to the space. I'll try to stick to the principle of "live and let live," but I must admit I'm thinking of adopting a kitten in the coming year...

Every Little Bit • Knitting • Dignified Poncho • Cat House • Ask a Rabbit • Hey/Hay! • Roof Interview • Nature Corner •