“Snowmageddon.” That’s what I thought looking out the window from the safety of my living room that late-January morning. Up and down the street, trees were toppled over, and many of the power lines were hanging perilously close to the ground, trying to support the heavy branches that had fallen atop them. A vast sea of white, stretching as far as the eye could see, blinded me. In a fury, Mother Nature had battered the city overnight with nearly two feet of snow. A Nor’easter — the second one in two weeks. With the smaller snow storms we had that month — it was just too much snow.
With my supersized coffee mug in hand, I listened to the continuous weather coverage on the news. “A new record has been set here in Connecticut this month, ladies and gentlemen,” the weatherman said. “Since the beginning of the new year — that was only twenty-five days ago — more than fifty-eight inches of snow has fallen in many parts of the state. Now, folks, I hate to tell you this, but we’re looking at another potential nor’easter for early next week. And it could be a big one.”
“Great. Just what we need,” I thought. “Another blizzard.” The snow was already above the window sills of my small Cape Cod home. “If the next storm is bigger than this one, my house will be completely devoured.” Although picturesque and reminiscent of some of my favorite Currier and Ives prints, with nearly five feet of snow lying on the ground, it was overwhelming.
Kept awake all night by the oversized diesel trucks and the sound of their blades scraping against the pavement, they tried in vain to keep up with the three-inch-per-hour onding. The storm had outfoxed them. For whatever reason, they stopped plowing the streets in my neighborhood just before dawn, and they were now impassable. A blitzkrieg of slush and ice was pushed up against my picket fence, toppling over it, and into my front lawn, adding several more feet to the enormous snowbank that was created by previous storms. The gate was all that was visible. I prayed my poor fence had survived the relentless beating it had taken overnight and in prior weeks, but if the weekly precipitations didn’t stop, I might never learn its fate.
I opened the front door to let the dogs out only to find the screen door blocked. Their only exit was the garage. But Zoey, my black lab, was terrified of stairs and refused to go down into the basement. Not that it mattered. When I opened the garage door, the snow was so far above Wolfy’s head, he couldn’t jump over it. He paced back and forth, whimpering. Shoveling was out of the question — it would take too long. I grabbed my coat, stood at the edge of the garage, and plunged backward. Packing the white powder down, I flapped my arms up and down and rolled around, creating a large pen. It was less laborious than shoveling and faster too. Better still, it worked. Getting the screen door open upstairs required more effort. Putting all my weight into it, I kept pushing at the door until the ice buckled and Zoey and I could squeeze through. She walked off the porch, climbed up to the peak of the frozen cliff, went down the other side, and onto the street. Hopping through the deep finger drifts like a deer, she went down the hill and disappeared.
Following her trail, I ran after her. In a thundering protest, the ice beneath me gave way. I sunk thigh-high into the freezing cold mound. Clawing and crawling my way back to the porch, I grabbed the shovel and got to work. An hour later, I still hadn’t made my way to the front gate. Frustrated and exhausted, I said, “Dear Lord in heaven, please help. I must find the dog before it’s too late.” Zoey was a wanderer. If she ran more than a block or two away, she couldn’t find her way home. Every minute that ticked by, the situation became grimmer. I felt helpless — there was still a lot of work ahead of me. Unfortunately, the guy I hired couldn’t get to me for several more hours. I was on my own. Once I got to the street, I then had to dig out my car. “Where is my car?” I thought. “I can’t tell which one is mine.”
John, my neighbor, had purchased the house next door to me the prior year. I didn’t like him very much. He was a nuisance. He always parked his car in my driveway, across it, or in front of my gate, blocking the only exit I had for the dogs. He had a terrible habit of ringing my doorbell at midnight, which angered and frightened me. I avoided him at all costs. He had already shoveled his steps and walkway, which made me envious. But his car was still packed in somewhere on the street along with mine.
By the time I finished shoveling the sidewalk, my chest was in pain. I had overdone it and needed a rest. But I couldn’t rest. The dog was gone a long time. With a vengeance, I attacked the car that I believed was mine. “Hey, slow down. You want to give yourself a heart attack?” I looked up to see John standing alongside me with a shovel in his hand.
“My dog is missing. I’ve got to get my car out so I can go find her.”
“First of all, until a snowplow comes through, you’re not driving anywhere. So what’s the big rush? And second, if we do it together, it’ll get done faster.” Shocked. None of my neighbors had ever offered to help me with anything before. Living in a large city — it’s just how it was. Everybody kept to themselves — including me. “You sure this one’s yours?” He asked. “I could have sworn it was mine.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t tell one car from the other. But I’m pretty sure it’s mine.” We were at it for quite a while before I recognized the bronze hue of my Toyota — we were making headway. But John became red in the face and short of breath. “C’mon,” I said. “We need to take a break. Neither one of us can afford to have a heart attack.” We stood in the street while resting and looked at our hard work — we’d barely made a dent. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something cresting the top of the hill. It was a young boy. When he reached the top, I saw a black dog walking by his side. Without my glasses, I couldn’t tell what kind it was, but its tail whished back and forth high in the air — happy to be walking with its owner. I couldn’t take my eyes off it — I knew that whishing tail.
“This your dog, ma’am?” The boy asked.
“Yes, thank you for bringing her home. Where was she when you found her?”
“She wandered into our yard a couple of hours ago. My brother and I were playing with her.”
“That’s odd,” I thought. “Zoey doesn’t play with kids. They make her nervous.” “Do you live near nearby?” I asked.
“Yeah, only four blocks from here,” he said. “My mom was afraid she was gonna get hit by one of the trucks. So when we finished playing, we tied her to a tree in our front yard.”
“I was afraid of that too, and I appreciate that you took such good care of her. How did you know where she lived?
“The mailman told us.” Of course. The mailman. He knew everyone on his route, including their pets.
“My guardian angel was sure looking out for me today,” I said.
“Yeah, and your dog too,” John said half-jokingly. After a long rest and a hot lunch, we met outside again to continue shoveling. While we were gone, a plow had heaped a fresh pile of heavy, slushy, crud up against our cars. Exasperated, we got back to work clearing off my car, then his. By the time we finished, we had become good friends. But I never saw my dog’s rescuer again.
When I saw the mailman next, I thanked him for his part in Zoey’s return. He looked at me puzzled and asked, “What are you talking about? I didn’t give anybody your address. And no one in this neighborhood got their mail that morning. I couldn’t get my mail truck through any of the streets on my route.”
And then I remembered — I didn’t get my mail that day — not until late in the afternoon — well after the snowplows had cleared the streets. By then, Zoey had been home for several hours.
by Lorrie Lush