Blizzard on the coast; no show in Ruston

Mother Nature can do some strange things. She can send us enough heat in August to make us think we’re in the Sahara Desert. She can send us a drought as serious as folks are experiencing now in California; she can drench us with floods that virtually cover lake-side homes and wash out bridges on country roads.
It’s in winter, though, when she saves her neatest tricks. A plethora of song birds respond to the cold icy weather as having high metabolism they’re born with, they need plenty of food to keep their little motors running. My bird watching had gotten a bit boring during the mild winter so far. I love the cardinals, titmice and chickadees that visit my feeders every day but I eventually got tired of looking as I saw no other birds except for these three species.
Let the weather turn icy though like we’ve lived through for the past week or so, and the thickets give up the variety of birds where until now, they find all the comfort they need. Put out feed and here they come – purple finches, gold finches, blue jays, woodpeckers, fox sparrows and the occasional towhee. When we had a big snow a couple of winters ago with snow and ice covering my feeders, I put out feed on the floor of my back porch and it was like a zoo. My wife was less than enthusiastic about the mess the birds left as they gobbled down the seeds I had scattered on the porch, thanking me by leaving their droppings to be cleaned up.
When I was a kid growing up out on the rural route, getting to see and experience snow and watching the big flakes flutter down was a special treat. Goldonna seldom got snow but on those rare occasions when we did, it was like Christmas.
One particular snowfall remains in my memory to this day. I don’t know what year it was but I was maybe 12 years old and we got a serious one. Next to our home was a pine thicket and the tender pine branches were bent to the ground with the weight of a foot of snow.
We had neighbors living just on the other side of the thicket with a path that led from our house to theirs. I dug through my photo files and found a photo of me standing on the path next to one of the snow-laden pines.
Enough about the past. Let’s look at what has been going on around our state with this current artic blast. Although I don’t get as excited today as I once did at the prospects of getting to see snow, I admit I was just a tad disappointed when the weather folks said that north Louisiana might see a dusting of snow, if any at all. I still enjoy watching big feathery flakes drift down, provided it’s all gone by tomorrow.
The rare phenomenon was what was forecast for the southern part of our state when up to a foot of snow fell as far south as the Gulf coast.
On Tuesday morning, the little kids in places like Houma, New Iberia, Hackberry et al got to play and romp in snow, something many of them had never seen.
My daughter, Cathy, lives just outside Baton Rouge in the city of Central and she sent me a video of their snow covered yard with big feathery flakes still floating down. Six inches had fallen in her yard with another three inches forecast. I saw a photo of two guys on skis on snow-covered Bourbon Street of all places! They actually had blizzard warnings for areas along the coast. Crazy weather for sure and all we have up here is a drab landscape to look at and frigid temperatures but lots of birds.
I pledge to never complain about hot dry weather again. I’m so ready for spring.