Sights, Sounds, Shivers

This morning it was COLD here. I didn't need the thermometer to tell me that, there were sights and sounds aplenty.

It started with the realization that our cats, who had just come barreling in through the pet door, were fluffed up to twice their normal size. Thanks to that visual warning, I was warmly dressed when I went out to start the car.

The complaining whine of the car's engine confirmed that temperatures had plummeted overnight. The frosty crystals on the car windshield that refused to clear even after the car had been warming for fifteen minutes told me every bit as accurately as a thermometer that the temperature had made it into the lower teens.

A glaze of ice covered the nearby pond and geese were standing atop the water rather than swimming in it. The honking of the geese echoed endlessly in the crisp dry air.

Thick smoke billowing out of house chimneys like steam coming out of the cooling towers at nuclear power plants, made it evident that heaters were working overtime.

Yes, it was definitely cold.