Here’s how it’s going to go down.
Winter is going to come early this year and it’s going to come with attitude. After a 2015-16 season of mild temperatures and little snow, the 2017 version of winter will be a bad mother, back to assert herself as the bitter-cold destroyer of fun and good moods.
We’re talking exceptionally cold temperatures and monster storms every time you turn around. We’re talking weather so bad it will compel even the most hyperbolic old person to stop talking about the winters of his youth.
The fun will get started in mid-November and come February, winter will still be kicking our butts and making us cry.
Isn’t it amazing how I know all this just by spying on squirrels and fondling caterpillars in my backyard? No need to praise me, my friend. Your silent awe is enough.
Or perhaps I’m lying to you and I actually gleaned these insights by cracking open — however reluctantly — the latest copy of the Farmers’ Almanac, a special 200th anniversary edition.
You better believe I’m reluctant to crack it open. I don’t simply credit the almanac with predicting the weather, I blame them for CAUSING the weather through some kind of sorcery involving field mice, corn silk and possibly that hairy stuff that grows on string beans.
I hate string beans.
When I open an issue of the almanac for the first time, I fully expect a great and icy wind to blow out of it, totally messing up my hair and immediately depositing 2 feet of fresh snow in my driveway, even if it happens to be August.
The Farmers’ Almanac freaks me out, is what I’m saying. I can’t resist it, though, because its forecasts are too frequently accurate to ignore and because I always come away from the experience with a ton of esoteric knowledge and random thoughts that can be used to annoy my friends and some lucky strangers.
“Never begin a journey until the breakfast has been eaten,” I will say to the nice lady in the pharmacy line at Rite Aid. She’s so impressed with his poignant life tip that she rushes right out of the store, scooping up her kid as she goes.
“Keep no more cats,” I’ll tell that angry bill collector who keeps calling, “than will catch mice.”
Plus, where else am I going to find an animal gestation table? Do you know how close I came to not knowing that the gestation period of a duck is 26-28 days? Or that the average number of young for a turkey is 12-15?
Until I opened this year’s almanac to check the weather forecast, I had absolutely no idea how to deal with a broody chicken. I also had no clue that a pregnant lady who reeks of garlic after eating it is going to have a boy.
But mostly I’m here for the weather and the weather forecast is bumming me out. In this way, I’m probably not any different from the chump who picked up a copy of the Farmers’ Almanac in 1818 and had himself a look.
“Curses,” says the 1818 chump in question. “Looks like I’m going to need a few more cord of wood, the chickens are going to need a rooster and my wife is having a girl. Say, did you know that the gestation period of a giraffe is 395-425 days?”
Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. Email woolly bear caterpillar prognostications to mflamme@sunjournal.com.
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