JOY ALONG THE WAY: ICICLE SPLENDOR

When nature punches us with an icy fist, first from the right, then the left and delivers an almost knockout uppercut, like a gracious adversary, she comes back with crystaline beauty for us to enjoy.

On the first recent ice-covered morning I looked out the west window to assess the tree damage I had heard going on in the night. Nearly all the surrounding yards had one or more fallen limbs. Mine came from a 40-year-old-cedar, a sweet gum and the dogwoods. Other nearby tree limbs bowed to the ground as if in reverent sorrow for their fallen neighbors.

Even in demise, the limbs were pretty, especially the cedar. A puzzled cardinal flew low all about it, either trying for a landing place or examining the possibility of extracting the blue cedar berries from their icy coating.

A rabbit, having ventured over from the hedgerow, hunkered low to make a quizzical study of the small trash pile the dogwood limbs made. Seeing a fallen wire (neighbor's TV cable) he maneuvered around it, no doubt thinking it might be some kind of an elaborate trap. Snowtime rabbits are wary. Do they realize the ease with which they can be tracked?

Slowly I shifted my gaze from the ground things to behold the beauty of the icicle-trimmed world. First, I noticed the fringe of crystal teeth trimming the eaves of one of neighbor Richard's buildings. I tried to think of a description. Paul Bunyan's comb? Moby Dick's teeth?

Bringing my eye focus back closer, I noted some fluffed-up sparrows sitting on the icicle-fringed porches of the martin house. Post card pretty picture. For the first time ever, I left the doors open to the martin house this winter. I'm glad I did. If the sparrows sit on the leeward side of the porches, perhaps, when the icy winds shift, they'll have sense enough to change sides or, even better, go inside.

The little red log cabin wren house, a center of busyness in spring and summer with the vociferous wrens and silent butterflies flying and fluttering about, was also icicle-fringed from the roof to the base. On the corners where the logs cross, the frozen water hung. Some of the twigs of last summer's nest stuck out the door of this chilly house and had tiny icicles hanging from them. Some artist could not have painted a more whimsical picture -- a study in miniaturization.

Eventually I looked at everything I could see through the window with an eye to awarding a first prize to the most picturesque. The maze of telephone, electric and cable TV wires were given a nod of appreciation for the network of crystal trimming they formed overhead.

I judged the tall latticed garden seat to be second runner-up. It was overall glazed with frozen snow melt, ice stalactites depending from the rooftop pieces. Brackets from which flower pots hung last summer had been changed from black iron to black glass.

First runner-up was the big red bird feeder. With sloping roofs on all four sides, it appeared to have an icicle canopy thrown over it, close-together icicles reaching all the way to the trays -- an oriental ice palace containing precious bird seeds.

The envelop please!

But wait! A flock of gossipy little goldfinch has descended on their cylindrical feeder. They perch on the ice covered rods from which icicles hang and try to peck open the holes where they can retrieve some seeds. Cold pickin's. This picture has life and sound and movement. I bow to it, the grand prize winner.

Through the window the goldfinch see me and pause for a few seconds, looking, as if trying to make out what this thing is on the other side of the glass.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.