The mystery persists of why the east side of the pond remains open while the rest of the pond is covered with ice.  Suzanne Masland on the south shore of the pond (Edgewood Road area) sent this photo this morning, and added that she spotted some ducks enjoying the still-open water today, too.  This picture is looking north and you can see all the open water at the right of the shot.  That is certainly not the deepest part of the pond, but Diane Rossi has a couple of theories - that the wind sweeps down that side of the pond while the west side is more protected, and also the sun hits there perhaps longer in the afternoon.  Somehow there's just more hot air over there . . . 

I do hope the ducks leave before the temperature at night drops dramatically tomorrow night.  We've seen in the past how ducks can become pinned in the ice if they spend a cold night either in the water or close to the edge so during the night their feet and feathers get frozen in and they cannot get loose to fly off.  I remember one Thanksgiving many years ago, when we were living at camp and Homer and Elsie Fitts were year around at their camp, that happened.  The ice was too thin for anyone to be able to get to them, and after such a cold night they probably wouldn't have survived anyway - but it was really hard to see them struggling.  It has happened a few other times, too.  Back then we thought they had hung around too long because people were feeding them all fall, but I doubt anyone has been feeding them this year, although you never know.  People think they are being kind to wild animals by feeding them, but really they are putting them in danger.  Left to their own instincts, they will take care of themselves ok.  We thought a couple years ago there was a loon trapped in open water near Talbot's on the west shore, but to everyone's relief it was able to take off on its own before the water closed in.

We're looking at a very cold week ahead.  Sub-zero temperatures will no doubt be quite a shock for us after the warmth we've had, but we all knew it wouldn't last.  It's payback time.

We are hoping someone may want to try to fix the feed mechanism on our printer/copier/scanner/fax that we just replaced, and we'd be happy to give it to them.  It is an Epson 500 Workforce model, about 9 years old, and everything works super well except the paper feed.  It just won't grab the paper, no matter how you load it.  I can't help feeling someone who knows about this sort of thing could fix it and still have a great machine - and it's loaded with new ink and I'll give you three extra cartridges.  It takes #T0684 cartridges, four colors.  Let me know if you or someone you know would like to try to rehab it and it's yours.  I'll be putting it on Front Porch Forum later as I really hate to just take it for recycling.  It still scans and the fax works fine - just no printing.  Send me an e-mail or phone if you want it. janebrown@fairpoint.net, or 802-563-2381.