Snow can protect us from what we'd rather not see

Some days it just doesn't pay to go out and embrace late January's day of surprising sunshine.

In one brief stroll along our driveway and front walk yesterday, I noticed things in the yard that would normally have been buried under piles of shoveled snow.

Things that ... well ... I didn't drop there. Things I'm not happy that someone else did drop there.

The easiest culprits to identify were those I credit with digging up, then abandoning the now-rotting tulip bulb that's hiding in plain sight near our dormant trellis roses. It had to have been the posse of squirrels that have been tormenting us for months. Ma and Pa Squirrel and their extended family no doubt tired of the hockey game they've been playing in our attic each morning. So, they took the kids and Gramps out for some good old-fashioned garden destruction. Thanks, gang.

Then there was the salad-dressing cap. It might be reasonable to guess that it had just blown out of somebody's trash. But whose? Not ours. You see, we recycle, which means my husband washes the goo off before dropping it in the recycling bag before tying it up on alternate weeks and leaving it for the men in blue-box collection regalia. So, it's not ours. Which may well mean that Ma, Pa, Gramps and the kids went on a field trip to someone else's trash.

Unless those same squirrel-ly tenants of ours decided they needed a little pocket change, they're clearly off the hook for the stash of thin blue rubber bands scattered where our old silver maple once stood. They were, most likely, left by a newspaper carrier.

It's also doubtful that I can blame the rowdy rodents for the most repulsive find of all -- a used condom. The images it brings to mind (it hasn't been that sunny a January) are ... well ... forget it. They just ARE, and that's bad enough. But, I'm certain that a Trojan treasure would not have been left behind by the squirrels. Surely, they would have carted it up the utility pole, across the wires and through one of the three-inch entrances they've chewed into the wood.

Aha! I've just recognized the silver lining to this particular cloud.

It would have been much more unsettling to someday find the condom tucked somewhere in the attic.