Holy Flying Boobies!

The daybreak air was clinquant with ice crystals. On this most brumal of mornings, I could hear the frozen surface crepitate underfoot as I traversed the hiemal landscape.

I’ve been to Dictionary.com a lot these days.

Well, we have snow now! Lots of it. Streamers have been raging off Lake Huron threatening to pound poor little Minikin into white oblivion. The most recent storm was not unlike the blizzard that Good King Wenceslas and his sidekick Paige faced. You know, the one in the song that was so fierce it blew the feathers off birds:

Paige and Monarch forth they went, 
forth they went together,
Through the rude wind’s wild lament,
And the bittern feathers.

I received a book for Christmas which is all about birds and bird feeders. It’s quite fascinating. For instance, did you know that the scientific name for a downy woodpecker is picoides pubescens? The picoides part means woodpecker-like while the pubescens means downy.  Another bird of this genus, the grumpy old gray-haired woodpecker is known scientifically as picoides adultus.

Our bird feeders however have made for a miniature avian battleground. I haven’t seen this much fighting and pecking since Canadian Parliament was in session. And I’ve been busy filling up the damn feeder every second day to feed our famished feathered friends. Not only that, I've had to trudge through mounds of snow to please the little peckers.

Meanwhile fearless Minikinites like myself have been shoveling their little tushies off to keep driveways, walkways, and bird feeding arenas cleared. And if I don’t take it easy, I’ll have a hiemal hernia to deal with.

But like the droplets of icy lace that incessantly flutter down from the lowering skies, crazy news continues to descend upon us.

A recent item from nearby Woodstock tells the story about a wholesome 13-year-old boy who was sent home from his Catholic school for wearing a bracelet that says he adores gazongas. Actually, the bracelet says, “ I ♥ boobies”.

The bracelets are a promo for breast cancer awareness from the Keep A Breast organization.

I know when I was 13 years old, I was very much like this young shaver. I never gave a thought about female anatomy. All I was concerned with were social issues.

I remember I once wanted to wear a t-shirt to school in support of The Heart and Stroke Foundation. The shirt was emblazoned with an image of a large heart and the slogan "I have a big heart on!" But that was back in the '60s, so my idea was a little ahead of its time. The time is apparently ripe for it now. Are you listening out there you downy pubescent purveyors of charity and benevolence?

And now it is time for me to sign off; to fly away like the tufted titmice, or the red-breasted mergansers, or even — yes dear readers — the boobies.