"You want that for dirt?" the guy at the hardware store asked.

Yeah, we're kinda at that awkward time of the year. Too cold to be drilling in dirt, not yet cold enough to be drilling through ice to fish.

But yeah, we need it to drill in dirt.

Hard, dense, bitterly frozen dirt.

Even with the gas engine, the rented auger wasn't really up to the job. Fingers and toes were chilled to the bone from shovel work before the hole was declared a grave.

After laying the precious little maskless red heeler into the cold, cold earth, we filled the hole by flashlight. The mound of brown earth already dusted with new fallen snow before each shovelful could be laid.

And then we five stood there, frozen in more ways than one. Snickering at the little corgi pushing snow with her nose, frantically, hopelessly, trying to bury the 6-point elk head she found in the yard.

Our laughter brought a chiding bark from the dog next door.

And the barking turned into honking.

Honking?

"Geese!" the wife shouted. Directly above, somewhere in the white mist, a flock of geese were noisily wending their way south in the darkness.

But their pitch was off.

Those aren't Canadians, I announce.

And then they were there. A vee of white snow geese, just barely above the treetops. Twenty or thirty solid white blurs against a whitish-grey sky, honking in their alien accent.

I've never seen snow geese here before.

"Look, Amber," the wife cried, "You've got a fly-over!"