The frozen plastic Auburn cup

Out of all the many, many upcoming reasons to discuss about living in Alabama, I will probably come back to the gorgeous foliage more than anything else. Spring is officially one week away, but things are FINALLY beginning to bloom where I live.

I say "finally" because Spring is a little late this year, due to an uncharacteristically brutal Winter. Although we only had one significant snowfall in Alabama (same as last year), the consecutive days and nights of frigid temperatures were highly unusual. It was so cold that our pond froze over - it's a 3-acre pond, and ponds DO NOT freeze over in Alabama. I don't ever remember it happening in my lifetime. When we lived in Iowa, it was an expected occurrence each year, but it's almost an impossibility in Alabama. Also, the air ALWAYS feels damp in Alabama, even when it's below-freezing, so the low temps in Alabama always feel colder to me than anywhere else. It's the kind of cold that gets into your clothes and under your skin, and you can't get rid of it. In Iowa, you could easily layer the cold away from you, but in Alabama you almost need a diving wetsuit to stay warm in Winter.

One of the funny things that happened with the frozen pond involved a plastic Auburn cup. During the previous summer, Grancey and I stocked the pond with bass, bluegill, grass carp, and minnows. Instead of getting an expensive food-throwing machine, we decided we'd just drive out there ourselves everyday and toss the food in by hand. We bought a GINORMOUS bag of gamefish pellets, and I separated it into 8 plastic containers that had once been kitty litter buckets (not used kitty litter, good God, Cubby, what were you thinking?). We kept a container of fish food in each car at all times, so we could always feed the fish no matter which car we were in. One day, Grancey was using a plastic Auburn cup to scoop the food out of the container and sling it out into the water, and she managed to sling the cup along with the food. The plastic cup sailed way out onto the pond, and she couldn't reach it with anything. We watched it self-propel itself directly to the center of the pond and just sit there, taunting us.

Now, the pond is home to many different types of wildlife - gamefish, trash fish, turtles, grebes, herons, kingfishers, a wayward beaver, wasps, dragonflies, and - of course - water moccasins (also known as the cottonmouth). We have seen plenty of moccasins shooting across the surface of the water many times, but they are also known to swim underwater where you can't see them. For that reason (and that was reason enough alone), I was not about to put one toe in that stupid water to retrieve some damn cup. Grancey wanted me to go get the cup, because it wrecked the entire feng shui of the little bucolic pond atmosphere we had going, but screw that. I wasn't going after ANYTHING in that water.

Instead, we both turned into Mr. and Mrs. Wile E. Coyote, as we kept returning to the pond day after day with these outrageous contraptions we'd conceptualized and built for the sole purpose of getting that damned Auburn cup out of the pond. We tried to create waves that would send the cup sailing toward the opposite bank where we could easily pick it up, but the cup only bobbed in the waves. Apparently, we had both forgotten that water doesn't actually move forward in a wave - merely up and down. Then, we tried to connect various lengths of poles together with a net on the end to try and snare it, but it was way too far out for that. When it was an especially windy day, we'd sit on the bank like kids at a baseball game hoping for the wind to blow it in our direction so we could snag it. Nope. Finally, in the Fall, we both resigned ourselves to the fact that we would just have to wait it out for the cup to gradually work its way to the edge where we could reach it, but it managed to get hung in the reeds towards the backside of the pond. Great. Every day, we would drive around the pond, looking at the wildlife and taking pictures, and one of us would be obligated to say at some point, "There's that damn cup."

As I mentioned before, the temperatures in January were so severe that the pond eventually froze over. Now, I would never be so stupid as to step out onto the ice, but it was definitely frozen solid. While walking around the pond one Saturday afternoon and playing with the ice(throwing various pieces of debris like rocks and sticks to watch them bounce and slide across the frozen surface), Grancey shouted that she could see the cup! It had managed to float over to the edge, and was actually touching the bank at the very back edge of the pond where we could reach it. Oh, frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!

I climbed down the embankment where the cup was positioned in the water, and casually reached down to grab it. I actually put my hand on the accursed cup! But it wouldn't budge. It was frozen in place! It was stuck half in and half out of the water, with the ice frozen solid all around it. I yanked at it. I grabbed a stick and beat at the ice. I wiggled around and hung my foot over the ice and kicked at it trying to break through. Nothing.

It was the Excalibur of Macon County.

And I was not worthy.

And Grancey laughed hysterically.

We returned to the spot each day, and I pounded the ice with rocks, limbs, my boots, and everything else I could grab to somehow break through and get that damn cup out of the pond. In the end, all it took was waiting a little longer for the temperatures to return to normal. The ice eventually melted on its own, and one glorious day in February, I was able to casually pull the cup out of the water.

It now rests on a crate in the garage, and we will move it to a place of honor somewhere around the pond this Summer in a solemn ceremony. Hey, the cup has earned it.