Snowshoe feet

Beautiful clear crisp day in the park this morning. Didn't go near the lake. After several days of rainy, miserable weather earlier in the week, followed by cold, cold, days, we didn't want to go sliding in to the lake. JJ absolutely refused to go to the park during the rainy days - she stops dead about 3 houses down, does her business, and won't go anywhere but home. Who's the boss??? Hmmm.

Anyway, I was cozy and warm in my fuzzy new boots. The open area of the lake seems even smaller. Clearly, some people have been in the park - note the police barrier now frozen into the lake. The only clear paths are the car roads, the horse path, and the Greg Mocker Memorial Plowed Path, all 30 feet of it. However, the Peninsula was lovely. All the rain followed by ice has made a very strong crust on top of the snow, easy to walk on, chase sticks on, whatever one fancied. Just like our feet were snowshoes. But we still avoided the lake - a dog was on the ice and broke through and drowned a few weeks ago. Don't want to risk it. Luckily, JJ seemed happy enough to cool off by rolling around on the snow.

Tony (from FIDO) was there with his dogs Jupiter and Fanny. Nice to see him, and we all had a good chat, especially about the N.Y. Times article yesterday, reporting that 1,676 geese were killed last summer. the headline said "for air Safety" but admitted that the Prospect Park geese weren't killed for air safely but for other reasons, such as protecting private property (which the Park isn't) and to prevent damage to ornamental plantings and other nonsense reasons. Tony believes that Bloomberg asked the Feds to off the geese to prevent lawsuits - that it wasn't the Par officials who initiated the action. The worst part of the article? They're going to do it again next year, at more sites, with new capturing techniques. Very depressing.

Tony also has a theory as to why Central Park is so much better kept. The city doesn't run it any more - it's the Central Park Conservancy, which has a lot of money. Well, between the East Side and the West Side, they are surrounded by some of the most expensive real estate in the world, but I didn't think that they were that much more generous than we Brooklynites.