One Snowman's Story

This is one snowman's story. . .

It all started one snowy afternoon about a month ago. Crazy Fox rolled the fresh, powdery, snow into a big snow ball and then another and another. Each one placed carefully, one on top of the other.

Twig arms were freshly cut off of the bare tree and placed in the appropriate spots. Crazy Fox willingly gave his new snow friend the scarf off of his neck, and The Zookeeper chipped in with his hat. Everything was going smoothly for Mr. Snowy. We even had fresh carrots in the fridge. The perfect nose was chosen and stuck in place. Now all that was missing were eyes and buttons. Everything was covered in snow. What will become of this Mr. Snowy if he has no eyes? Don't worry. . . The Zookeeper's Wife is very resourceful. Of course with the purple pony party looming, there was lots of extra homemade purple playdough in the house. So, we just made a few balls for purple eyes and added them, centered just above the nose. Although, the eyes weren't sticking very well. Just at that moment, we realized there was bark covering the ground just beneath the snow. We dug in a bit and found three bark buttons to finish Mr. Snowy's attire. Handsome, isn't he?

Crazy Fox told Mr. Snowy goodnight and went to bed himself.

The next morning we went out so greet Mr. Snowy and see if there were any cheery birds sitting on his shoulder. There are always cheery birds sitting on the shoulders of snowmen in picture books. Have you ever noticed that? But we did not see any cheery birds sitting on Mr. Snowy's shoulders. What we saw instead was awful, almost gruesome.

Okay, let's take a break from this saga and take a quick quiz?

1.What is one of the main ingredients in play dough?

2. What do you sprinkle onto icy sidewalks to melt the ice?

3.When I say pepper, what is the first word you think of?

The answer:

That's right . . . .Salt, Sodium chloride, NaCl,

Now, back to the story. . .

Where his sparkling purple eyes had been the night before, was now eaten away, by all the salt in the play dough. The Zookeeper's Wife no longer felt like a creative, resourceful mom. Instead, she saw before her, all the hard work her son put into building Mr. Snowy ruined by a snowman's worst fear. Flesh eating bacteria. Salt. The rapid melting of snow.

Upon further inspection, the flesh eating bacteria had spread, deep into his torso. He was doing all he could to stay standing, fighting against the disease within him.

We had to act fast if we wanted to save him. First we tried a skin graft, but his body rejected it. He could not take much more. So we decided to do a complete head transplant. We had a donor ready and waiting, but when we placed it on his torso he crumbled. . . to the ground. . . into chunks of snowman. The bacteria had completely eaten away at his body. So we quickly rounded up a donor torso and placed it onto the lower portion of his body. He was weak, and started to wobble, we thought we were going to loose him. We gave him some support around the base and hoped he could hold on through the procedure. We attached the new head with little trouble. We even gave him some deep-set bark eyes. They were not as sparkly as his first ones, but much healthier for a man of his kind. We bundled him up in his scarf so he could recover from the traumatic night that he had barely lived through.

He was able to stand tall again. He's practically new, almost, a bionic snowman.

But lately we have noticed that Mr. Snowy is loosing weight. His health is declining again. There is nothing else we can do. Sometimes you just have to let go. He can barely lift his arms and he has lost all of his parts. The life of a snowman is a tough one. Staying out at night in the freezing weather, knowing that even though you want the sun to come out and shine, it is the worst thing for you.

It could really leave a hole in your heart.