The past couple of weeks have been very cold and as a result the slower, wider section of the Mascoma river outside our office has frozen over. It freezes like a bad wound heals: along the edges, slowly closing the gap over time leaving a zipper strip of rough ice down the center.

The ball showed up about a week ago.

Jeff asked, "Hey, have you seen the blue ball?"

"Blue ball?"

"Yeah, there's a big blue ball, beach ball sized, that's been showing up off and on. It blows around the ice, disappears for a day or so and then comes rolling back."

Tuesday I finally saw the blue ball. It seemed to be lost, wandering the ice and shoreline. Perhaps it was in search of a flat opening to make it's escape? We'd see it wobbling in a frozen elbow of the river, sloshing a bit in a shallow patch of exposed water. A few minutes later it would be fifty feet away, rolling across frozen snow, coating itself like a donut hole in sugar.

Yet somehow it avoided the slash of open water that threatened, or perhaps promised, to carry it away. Closer, closer, wobbling along freshly frozen fissure edge when a gust of ghost wind would usher it back upstream and out of harm's way.

The last I saw of blue ball was Wednesday afternoon, it had foundered in a field of jagged ice extrusions, surely captured forever...or at least until some mighty wind lent it legs again.

Fittingly, Jeff saw the last of blue ball. He was heading home late that afternoon and thought, "I wonder where the ball is?" Looking out the window he was just in time to see the ball finally overcome the fissure's edge and plop into the cold rush of river.

Not knowing about the escape, I was looking for it yesterday when I saw a "hairy ball" sitting on the ice edge. Zeke needed fresh air and I'd brought in the big lens to take a picture of blue ball, so we headed outside to get a closer look.

The Muskrat was oblivious to our inspections and to my flailing as I discovered the snow camouflaged sheen of ice on the river bank. The Muskrat's was perched about six feet from shore and even my louder catcalls and whistles wouldn't convince it to look my way for a better photo.

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