Real winter has finally come to us this month. It snowed, maybe a little more than we have seen for the past couple of years, and the temperature fell at night to what I call “hard cold” lows of -19 to -24°F. Sometimes these cold mornings had little or no wind, but a few times the wind was up to about 30 mph. At these times it is best to do outside chores quickly and go inside to catch up on e-mail or read a book or pay bills or watch the Australian Open tennis matches on TV. I did all of the above until I could no longer stand it; so I would go outside for a little while and find something else to do before bolting for the door again. I don’t bolt so very well anymore, but I sure give it a good try.
On these days I am always amazed by what I see in the world outside, how little the weather extremes seem to affect the animal life out doors. Usually the first thing I see when I exit my door in the pre-dawn morning is the horses. They come up the hill from the windbreak of trees in their pasture and line up more or les patiently along the fence and wait for me to give them some hay and maybe a little grain. On these really cold days the long hairs on their winter coats are frosted: mane, tail, whiskers, eyelashes and back. The insulation to their bodies is so good that their body heat is retained and does not melt the frost. It takes the sun, perhaps reflecting off a wall to accomplish that.
Then I often see buffalo, deer, antelope, rabbits, coyotes, and birds going about their daily business as if it were summer. The birds have stayed on their roosts and perches, mostly out of the wind, and have remained almost motionless with their feathers fluffed up, burning the previous day’s weight gain, until they can see well enough to begin their daily foraging in preparation of that night’s cold.
The deer, most have been foraging all night, are seeking a quiet place (whitetails largely in the wooded areas along the creek and mule deer usually in or near brushy areas in a draw on a hillside) to sleep the day through. Rabbits, coyotes, and other four-legged fur bearers like fox and badger, raccoons and squirrels have their own agendas and follow them with what appears to be little regard or concern for the weather–not like human beings–for whom the weather is always a major concern.
The buffalo seem impervious to me. Neither summer heat nor winter storm and cold appear to have any noticeable effect on them. They don’t seek much shelter. Oh, they may move on occasion to the lee side of a hill or into a draw, ostensible to avoid the wind–but that may not be at all the case. They may kind of “camp-out” in the sun, on a deceiving zero degree sun filled winters day, lying there peacefully, chewing their cud.
Perhaps being it, they never appear to worry about defining reality.