A Snowy Stroll

Today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt is PEDESTRIAN

Like other PED- words like pedicure, pediform, and pedal, this word pertains to what you do with your feet. And today, in our part of the world, folks who are on foot outdoors are walking through snow.

We had a wonderful week of spring; roads and sidewalks were bare and we enjoyed getting around outside. Our cats were delighted to explore parts of the yard that have been inaccessible all winter. Twice Angus brought his mouse-ly discoveries to our front step where he could dine at leisure.

But this morning we have another parting slap from winter and our cats are housebound. They waited at the door this morning to be let out as always and…er…no thanks. The mouse community is probably heaving a collective sigh of relief. 🙂

I went to the city yesterday—and am glad I did—because my hearing aid broke. It snapped off where the plastic tube joins the actual metal housing, and I was fearing it may not be fixable. (Thankfully it was!) I debated waiting until today, but, as I said, I’m glad I chose the nicer day to travel.

I wondered if the city streets would be empty, but no — I saw about a third of the usual traffic for that time of day. Which made it quite nice for a timid person like myself trying to merge onto normally crowded main arteries. I did see a few pedestrians, about a quarter of what we would usually see walking on the main street sidewalks. stopped at Walmart for groceries; again, the numbers were reduced to about a third of the usual shoppers.

En route, I saw a number of migrating birds, including about five flocks of Canada geese. Some of these were being pedestrians, strolling around the harvested fields, gleaning what they could. Many were floating on small snow-melt ponds. Three of the flocks were quite large, maybe 50–80 birds. So the birds haven’t changed their course in spite of the current human standstill.