We've had lots of excitement here this morning. At a little before 8 a.m. we heard sirens and saw a fire truck over on Route 15. I turned on my scanner and heard there was a possible fire on "the far end of West Shore Road." One of the responders reported he'd done a "walk-around" and found no evidence of a fire.

By now, we were wondering if it was our cottage, or maybe the Ward farm by Route 2. Fred grabbed the camera and headed out. Normally we try to resist chasing the fire trucks or ambulances, but this time it was different. Within a few minutes after Fred left, I was hearing on the scanner that units were returning to quarters, so I knew there wasn't anything serious going on.

When Fred got back, he said something or someone had set off the alarm at the Decker/Layton cottage. When Fred got there, the firemen were still on site making certain everything was secure. Garey Larrabee was there, our neighbor, David Covell, and a whole bunch of other emergency responders from Walden Fire Department, so if there had been a fire or other emergency, they would have had things under control quickly.

Here's a short slide show of the scene on West Shore Road this morning:
Early Responders

You can tell it's a beautiful morning here at the pond. We had a cold night, in the low 20's, and there was lots of frost on the grass and trees this morning. If you look carefully you can see there's a skimming of "cat ice" on the water at the far left of the picture by Bill Hamilton's again; this is a clear indicator the temperature of the pond is getting low enough so, unless we have a stretch of unusually warm weather, the pond will freeze over soon - maybe around Thanksgiving, which is about normal.