It appears that this fall, when we built a new roof on our home, we also created our very own home avalanche kit.

Ooops.

The idea of the new roof was to make the angle so steep that Paul wouldn't have to go up there several times over a winter and shovel it off. The spousal unit's getting older now and I worry about him doing stuff like this, eh.

(Only because he is woefully underinsured, of course. Darn, the things you don't think about when you're young, eh.)

Thing is, the steep new roof wasn't shedding snow. This has been a big snow year but it's also been very cold, so the snow just basically built up and up and up. I was starting to wonder how much more weight the roof could take. Then a few days ago we finally got our first day over freezing in eons.

The snow slid off with a very impressive rumble and made the house vibrate slightly. I was playing with my new dolls--I mean, I was assembling my new McKenzie Brothers action figures so Paul can build them a home--when it happened. For a second I thought the roof had broken under the weight.

So here's the problem: the snow rockets off the roof with such force that instead of just dropping beside the house, it shoots out over eight feet and bombs the footpath we use to get into our house.

This would be benign if it was just a few fluffy flakes, but it is a whole other ballgame when we're talking about a roof's worth of heavy, packed down wet snow landing WHOMP on your head. As you can see from the snow that got hung up behind our chimney and didn't slide off, and the snow that's still sitting on our smaller roof, we're talking about some serious weight here.

A person could get smushed.

I know this would make one of those great stories to tell the grandchildren I might someday have. ("Why yes, I remember like it was yesterday. It was the winter of ought one and your late grandma Marn was walking into the house when she was pancaked by the new homicidal roof").

But, well, if I have my druthers I'll croak peacefully in my sleep thank you very much. I've been boring all my life. Dying in a unique manner would be SO out of character for me, you know?

For the moment we've shoveled an alternate, winding route to the front steps which avoids death by roof, but adds about 20 feet to the walk. As you can see, our homicidal roof is gathering more ammo even as I type.

In other late breaking developments, there has been a lull in The Great Grey Squirrel War of 2001.

It's been days since the squirrels have been anywhere near our bird feeders.

As I see it, there are several possibilities here.

They may have given up.

Heeeee.

I can be SUCH a kidder sometimes.

Me, I think they're trying to soothe us into a false sense of security until their next commando raid. I wouldn't put it past them to be building some sort of bird feeder assault machine.

The spousal unit has a different take on the situation. A few days ago he built a squirrel feeding platform on a nearby tree. He sprinkles it liberally with sunflower seeds every day and says that this is what is saving our feeders.

When I point out this means we are now officially feeding squirrels (and ask if it wouldn't just be simpler to just let them eat from the bird feeders) he gets quite snippy.

Alrightee then.

Clearly there's some fine point I'm missing here.

You'll be the first to know when I figure it out, eh.