The River Green

Icicles. The sharpest of them are perfect murder weapons. The heaviest of them can take down gutters. Luckily, the latter, not the former applied to those hanging from and around our house.

I tried to keep ahead of the icicles growing on the front of the house, both from the porch roof and the house roof. Fairly early on, batting them down from the bedroom window resulted in the drain half of the gutter coming down. It sits on the porch roof waiting until one or both of us are in a prone position to fall on our heads.

Not having the gutter present allowed a rather large chunk of ice to form on the three wires which provide our home with electricity. After trying a pole, longer ole, curtain rod, hairdryer and cursing at it, Marieke suggested I use the gecko sprayer filled with hot salty water to melt the ice. Our fair cross-street neighbors were kind enough to act as audience, promising a round of applause if I was successful. I was and afterward, we left to do laundry.

The back of the house was a different world altogether. The ones growing above the back door needed daily whacking to keep the dogs safe. Little known to me, there was a much larger danger just out of my line of sight. Since I could barely venture 5 feet from the back door without fusing pitons, I was unaware that the icicle growing to the left was not growing from the roof of the mudroom, but was in fact growing from the roof of the house. It was freestanding and about 25-30 feet long.

To the gecko room we went. Once the lizards were out of the way (and covered), I leaned out and began whacking at the monster. A couple minutes later, we were running downstairs to make sure the mud room was still there and still had all of its windows.

After determining that all was good, we discovered that the top of the giant ice tentacle was at least 27 or 28 inches wide. It was literally an ice boulder now.

Marieke then leaned out of the window in the office and began bringing some of those ones down. Not wanting anymore large icicles to form, I shoveled some of the snow off the mudroom roof.

Over the next couple days, as the temperature rose above freezing, more and more ice fell to the ground. Most of it landing with multiple thuds and at least twice, landing so hard that it rocked the house and caused the lights to flicker.

Another ice chunk was on the house closest to ours, reaching from the top of that house all the way to the ground, in the space between the two houses. I knew I had to take it down before it fell uncontrolled into the basement window. It wasn’t as wide at the top as our ice monster, but it was much, much taller and the window was directly across from the base. While Marieke hung out in the mudroom, I managed to push it away from the window and it came crashing down. Marieke said it sounded like it was going to come through the dining room wall. I was actually worried for a minute that it would start falling toward me, in which case, I’m not entirely certain I would be writing about it today.

Hopefully we’re done with these ridiculously large icicles for the season… maybe even for a few years or so.

Labels: snow