The weather has really been a wild thing this month! Soft fluffy flakes, piling up. Blizzard strength winds causing whiteout conditions, sunny and frigid. Rain, sleet, coatings of ice. Now thirty degrees, cloudy, and warm enough to not hurt your face. It seems hard to deal with as a human. How many layers of clothes will be enough today? Are the roads passable? If I go somewhere, will I get home again? Should I stock up on some groceries just in case? Is it easier as an animal? They certainly don't seem to worry about it like we do. Instinct tells them how much food to store away, where to go to be safe from the storms.

There are species that not only survive, they thrive in the cold temperatures. This is the time of owls. They don't seem to mind the cold and wind. They are setting up territories and preparing nest. Some, like the great horned owls, use crow and squirrel nests. Other like the barred owl like holes in trees, deep pockets that will help protect the eggs and young. In February they lay eggs. They will sit on them, snow or rain, subzero temps. Then in the end of February the eggs will hatch and the endless feeding of hungry owlets begins. This hatching may seem early for those of us who hide in heated buildings most of the winter, but it reflects the time when many animals that the owls eat are producing the next generation. Rabbits, mice and voles, large litters that quickly out grow nests and are forced out into the snowy landscapes.

The owlets grow quickly on a rich diet and it only takes a few weeks and they get large enough to outgrow their nest, and learn to fly enough to go away into the woods, where they are much less likely to become lunch for another.

Deer, fox, coyotes are out and about the instant weather allows. All in search of the next meal, a good place to bed down. Cubs will soon be born in the underground dens. Milk will only suffice for a time, then prey will be needed to feed hungry mouths.

So even when you are tucked in your home, with a blanket and a hot beverage, the world just keeps going on around you. Spring will come when it does, teasing us a few times before it lasts. If you get out, enjoy the brief moments of snowy intensity, the blinding white and the breath stealing cold. Listen for the owls, quietly hooting. Life will be there when you shovel out...