Outdoors offers antidote to winter that drags on

The outside, too many humans, is a pick-out-me-up for many things monotonous, together with the climate and persistent wintry weather conditions.

Treks, tours, strolls, and excursions need now not be all-day affairs. Sometimes, a touch dab will do you. Other times, considering animals, even those poorly equipped, will bring us back to the truth that spending an hour on the ice or open trout water is all it takes.

Now isn’t always the time to crawl into a cave, go underground, or avoid managing an excessive winter climate.

Take a clue from the Virginia opossum, an animal that sincerely does not belong this far north, but it is here and copes with iciness in the exceptional manner it can.

This carrion feeder simply comes out at some point of iciness and searches roadways for others who’ve given their lives to snowplows, car tires, and snowmobile crossings.

Many traits of this marsupial’s life do not shape Wisconsin winters. Gestation is much less than two weeks, so the underdeveloped newborn embryos search for a pouch and fix it to a meal faucet multiple months earlier than being “born once more.”

The opossum’s tail and ears are hairless and get nipped at some point on cold days, forcing the animal to find refuge for a few days. There is no hibernating, and there is no longer even torpor.

It’s uplifting to see this animal venturing out, suggesting it’s willing to risk becoming roadkill, frostbitten, or bald eagle bait.

If opossums can be out, why not us? At least for a constrained time.

Other critters “of spring” are appearing, too, albeit every so often. Birds particularly fly approximately. Some early migrants are here (a few in no way go away). Listen for sandhill cranes and pink-winged blackbirds. Look for a chipmunk at dawn. Listen for a gobble. See paired coyotes; of course, deer and turkeys, too.

Long, snowy, cold winters test an animal’s will to survive, and white-tailed deer have ended up courageous while looking for woodland and landscape evergreens. Any unprotected arborvitae is there for the taking.

Even now, we can deter that feeding on special bushes by covering the shrub or tree base with sheets. Deer are tentative about a method and can visit white pines, deciduous shrubs, or even more bristly pines and spruces, so sheet all of them.

At least doing this can take one outdoors.

While not a preventive solution right now, if the area permits next spring, plant some of these herbal ingredients with the perception that deer may occasionally consume them.

Plants have all started detecting longer and sunnier days. Popsicles are common on maple types. Tapping can also wait, but now, not for absolutely everyone.

Other animals, such as deer, birds, and squirrels, are attracted to those bits of sucrose. Even looking through a window, the feed can bring a smile and suggest that some like sucrose as much as we do.

Take a small bite out of wintry weather on every viable occasion. Experience the evidence that many plants and animals are handling unseasonable happenings.

We can, too, use these outings as antidotes instead of taking winter as poison and pessimism.