The year we bought our house there was such a strange winter that the temperature dropped overnight rapidly and the plaza fountain froze in action. It was beautiful and odd to see but we had no idea how rare it was and we didn’t even own a camera at the time. It was an isolated, unique, unthreatening moment in time that welcomed us to the neighborhood.  I thought of that morning when I watched the horrific news from the east coast ‘bomb cyclone’ this morning which is apparently stretching from Texas to Florida to Boston to Maine. Here’s hoping our friends keep power and stay warm.

In the meantime, it is apparently never so cold that people can’t find it in their hearts to bundle up and be cruel to beavers. This news is from Maryland just south of Baltimore..

Four beavers shot and killed with arrows in Bowie

Bowie resident Matthew C. Perry went out shortly after dawn on New Year’s Day to look at birds. He braved the 16-degree weather to participate in the annual local bird count for the Audubon Society, which strives to keep tabs on the number of species and birds in a particular area.

While Perry and his son, Chris, counted birds, they also came across four dead beavers. They’d been shot by someone wielding a bow and arrow. The rodents remained scattered across the frozen surface of a pond near the Twelve Oaks development near Route 214 and Church Road on Tuesday morning, with the arrows still in them.

“This looked to me like somebody who was either enjoying bloodsport or hated beavers. To be out at this time of the year with a bow and arrow, you’ve got to really want to do it. You’ve got to hate them.”

Ugh. Who ever did this deserves much worse, At 16 degrees those beavers were frozen out of safety and easy target practice for who ever hated them. I guess their freeze conditions must haven been sudden too, otherwise they’d have been holed up for the winter and safe from arrows. I doubt they were shot at night. So some beavers needed something to eat and the door froze shut behind them, leaving them vulnerable. I imagine someone saw them locked out and thought this was their lucky day and ran home to get their weapon. Poor little guys didn’t have a chance.

This sudden freeze is taking so many more lives than we can even imagine. Think of the beavers in Georgia and Florida that never in a million years thought they needed a food cache. Meanwhile our Sierras get no snow and the Thomas fire in Santa Barbara is 92% contained.

But climate change is a hoax I hear.