With the days getting a little longer and the snow sinking more and more by the hour, it was time to do the “spring dance” and switch from the heavy, lined, knee-high sorrel boots to my favorite lightweight rubber boots.

Taking a tour of the yard while making mental notes of “to do’s,” I was stopped in my tracks at the hedge.

Ed had said all winter that the cottontails were working on it, but I didn’t believe him for one minute and defended them with my life. Watching them hop around in the snow outside my office window brought great joy, especially when a few got together and played “ring around the hedge,” circling fast and furious and causing the housecat to fall off the inside windowsill in a dizzy rabbit-eating tantrum.

When Ed’s pickup wouldn’t start in January, it had taken him a while to figure out the problem, and I was handed a chewed-up wire and a shotgun. He actually blamed my rabbits for the mishap!

A week later, when the same thing happened to my car, I had a slight inkling about the rabbit theory, but dismissed it as coincidence and ignored the gun propped up in the front closet with the note taped on it, reading: “Just in case you change your mind.”

Wow! – the entire hedge was stripped clean from about three to four feet up! Mad, yep – but somehow I had to defend the little buggers so I wouldn’t have to hear an “I told you so” from Ed. Using a scoop shovel, I hid most of the damaged hedge with nearby snow; it would buy me some time until I figured out a plan, either with spray paint or fake greens from Walmart.

Peeking through the melting snow in front of the house was the head of my ceramic rooster. Dang, I thought I had put him in a box last fall, but I guess the first snowstorm had caught us off-guard and the live livestock had taken priority.

I had caught all kinds of heck when I brought that prize rooster home. Some of the words were “You have ten roosters out in the barn! Stuff one and prop him up in the yard!” Some words back were “The barn roosters will be long gone and this here beauty will last forever.”

When I attempted to lift Sir Ceramic Rooster out of the snow, the head came out but his frozen rump stayed put and wouldn’t budge. Crap, it was too chilly to glue him back together before Ed came home, so a little snow piled on top of his bottom half worked just fine to hide him for now, while his head would be safe in my jacket pocket.

Out in the middle of the yard, the melting snow was revealing something very odd-looking, and the dog was having a fit over it. Now, dogs have a pretty good instinct when something pops up out of the snow that’s dangerous or worse, so I used caution when approaching. It had fur but wasn’t moving, so, feeling brave, I poked it with the end of the scoop shovel.

Thinking Ed had gone through with his threat and blasted one of my rabbits, I was in full ticked-off mode, until I saw that the tail was not of the “Thumper” variety.

Whatever it was, I didn’t think it could be alive, as the only thing sticking out of the snow bank was a fuzzy tail and part of a paw.

Dog was going nuts by then, and I didn’t know if I would be grabbing the tail to “save” something dead or pulling the tail of something alive and ending up dead myself.

Standing back as far as the shovel would reach, I poked it again and felt pretty safe… and then sad that whatever it was had been frozen in the snow, all by itself.

I took hold of the tail to pull it out and give it a name and then a proper burial – and the tail started wagging back and forth at lightning speed! Now, I’m not old enough for Depends and neither is our dog, but in a split second we both needed them!

Dog was in full “wolf mode” and going at the varmint with teeth bared. Running for the house to grab the shotgun from the closet, I was afraid that whatever it was might have rabies or get the best of Dog, and he had many, many more cows to help us chase in. I blasted a warning shot, and Dog shut up and sat back a ways.

Not backing out or burrowing in farther, the varmint was now wagging its tail back and forth even faster than before! Both Dog and I stood back a ways and watched as the furry thing started wiggling itself backwards out of the snow. We were both ready to kill it if it pounced on us.

First the long tail, then a body like no varmint I had ever seen around the farm, surfaced real slow-like. Waiting for the head to come out so we would know what we were in for, our eyes and the varmint’s were as big as saucers.

Literally, the black eyes of the snow beast were three inches around! As the furry bugger wiggled and hopped around on the melting snow, my head bounced along with it long enough to read a tag attached to its paw: “Squeeze Here.”

Okay, Dog, it’s all yours…