Cold Enough to Freeze the Balls off a Brass Monkey

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On Sunday, it was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

For those of you who are wondering, a "brass monkey" is (supposedly) a lipped plate that was screwed to the deck of a battleship while in port. Four iron cannon balls were then racked up in the plate, with three on the bottom and one on the top to form a pyramid. When it got really cold, the thin brass plate would contract far more than the iron cannon balls. The result: canon balls rolling aound loose on deck .. a very bad thing. Or at least that's the way to the story goes.... it apparently is not true.

Nonetheless the phrase feels right, if you know what I mean. Without a doubt it was brass monkey weather on Sunday, with 20 mile-per-hour winds too, which I why I left so little of my face exposed to the elements.

The good news is that with weather this cold, I could drive the truck straight out on to fields, barely leaving a track in dusted white powder.

Driving down the fields to get closer to the holes was definitely the right idea on this trip, as I was digging alone and the ground was frozen solid. I would need the big Bertha spoon to cut through the first 10 inches of ice, and it's a tool that weighs so much, I would just as soon not carry it very far.

I was a bit surprised to find a couple of best-prospect fox-den locations empty or even filled in. A long walk down a likely creek bed found a lot of scent (according to Mountain), but no one home. Bummer.

I headed to another location on the farm and drove right up to a copse of woods where I knew a couple of likely settes were located.

Bingo -- the first sette out of the truck I found a nice fox crap at the entrance. Mountain wasted no time and headed in, while I went to get the Bertha, pack, posthole digger, and Pearl.





Pearl wanted into the sette too, but neither dog could get in very far, and I quickly figured out why -- the pipe double-backed at an impossible angle. If the fox had managed to get in to this sette through this enterance, it was a true Houdini.







I tied up Pearl far enough away that her collar would not read on the Deben box, and I used the heavy bertha bar and blade to break up the frozen ground enough for a spade to finally be of use.

By the time I had finished opening up the pipe, however, Pearl was clearly freezing, and so I carried her 40 feet to the truck in order to get warmed up. On the way back to the hole, I saw Mountain racing off into the woods following a blur of red fur -- the fox had bolted just that quick. Ah well, you can't get them all on film, I suppose.

I grabbed my shovel and pack and headed off to find Mountain about 80 feet away trying to get into another sette. I knew this sette -- it was 12 feet deep (Sailor had gone to ground here), and in the middle of thick roots from surrounding trees. I had given this pipe a pass when other folks were with me to help, and it was going to be impossible digging solo in ground this frozen.

I grabbed Mountain before she got fully underground, and leashed her up. I drive to another section of the farm and we patrolled another creek bed together, but found nothing and I decided to call it a day.