Just when you think nothing exciting is happening around here, something does. The clock hasn't stopped, and the ice looks very much the same as it has, but on the way home this morning from checking the clock at 7 a.m., Fred saw a visitor coming down the road just beyond our house. He was headed into the woods, but when he saw the car, he stopped and started walking down the road, but after he'd had his picture taken, he lost interest and went along into the woods.

As for the ice on the pond, that hasn't changed much overnight, but there does seem to be more open water showing this morning, and it hadn't frozen over during the night, even though it was below freezing. We've also had some snow showers this morning - enough to show some white in the grass and on cold surfaces. We usually can tell quite a lot by the color of the ice - it gets darker as it begins to melt. The new snow can fool us, at least for a while, into thinking the ice is firmer than it really is. These are the pictures Fred took this morning. Slide show.

We saw a segment on TV this morning about drones with surveillance cameras, and decided one of those would be great to have to check the clock and pallet, especially when the roads are muddy. They are very expensive, but perhaps like all our other technical gadgets, the cost will go down over time and one day it would be affordable. Or a web cam, which we've seriously considered. For now, we'll continue to monitor the clock and pallet twice daily until something happens to send the pallet through the ice and the clock stops. THAT will be more exciting than a moose.