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Cold

In the dark of night, it silently slithered toward the back of the car, spray painting the windows with a sheen of opaque white.

It made its way around the car, finding the seam in the doors and filling it with surprisingly strong epoxy. It glided down to the ground and sucked some of the warm air out of the tires. The car was trapped on the driveway with no way to fight off this unwelcome intruder. If its alarm could have gone off, it would have warned us. But, no, that alarm only goes off early in the morning on the weekends, when someone opens the door with the key instead of deactivating the alarm system with a button, annoying the neighbors and embarrassing our kids and us in equal measure.

It slid under the hood. It paused over the heart of the machine, looking for places to extend its icy fingers into the exposed engine, snickering with delight at the opportunity to turn 3,000 pounds of metal into a frozen couch.

It reached into the battery and deactivated the power.

On my way to the car, it issued a warning, or was it a challenge, when it wrapped its icy fingers around my neck. I tried to ignore it and stick with my routine. When I turned the key, however, the car coughed weakly.

“Come on,” I pleaded, as the cold scraped its icicle hands against my exposed calf. I tried again. The third time was not the charm, either.

After getting a jump start, I decided to outsmart the wretched cold. I cleared space in the garage, hauling all the heavy items parked there into the basement. The garage door and the walls of the house would offer greater protection. No, I wasn’t giving the car a blanket and pillow and setting it up with reruns of “Knight Rider,” but I was protecting the family car.

The next day, I went through the basement into the garage, put the key in the ignition and beamed broadly as the internal combustion engine roared to life. Ha! I foiled the frigid air. I told the kids to climb in the car, which warmed up rapidly as a reward for keeping it in the garage, and drove triumphantly to school. The cold wouldn’t undermine my day, I thought, as I maneuvered through the responsibilities of the day.

When I returned home, I found that the cold had recruited my garage door to its unworthy cause. I didn’t look carefully enough when I had pulled away from the house. The garage door, fooled by a small piece of snow in the corner of the floor, thought it had hit something and reopened, where it stayed all day.

I pulled the car in, closed the garage and waited for the door to close. When the metal door reached the ground, it reopened. I played a short game with the door, pushing the button just after it started to open again so that the cold air had only a small opening.

“I win,” I announced as I entered the warm house.

When I turned on the water in my bathroom the next morning, I realized I had lost. The combination of the cold from the open garage from the day before and the small crack at the bottom of the door was enough to enable the cold to lay its frozen hands on my pipes.

Several hours later, the plumber, who was busier than a foraging ant during a Fourth of July picnic, shivered in the garage and proclaimed the small opening under the door as the culprit.

This cold snap, which finally left the area earlier this week, won this battle.

Volunteers hold the immobile sea turtles they discovered at West Meadow Beach, where Brookhaven Ranger Molly Hastings is working to nurse them back to health. Photo from Molly Hastings

December’s wacky weather made life more difficult for everyone — but sea turtles at West Meadow Beach had a particular struggle.

Recent outdoor temperatures were largely above normal, with some brief moments of frigid cold. Molly Hastings, who serves as Brookhaven’s environmental educator and park ranger, saw some of the environmental consequences of this when she received an unusual knock on her door on Dec. 20 after a volunteer encountered two immobile, or cold-stunned, sea turtles.

An immobile sea turtle discovered at West Meadow Beach is being nursed back to health. Photo from Molly Hastings
An immobile sea turtle discovered at West Meadow Beach is being nursed back to health. Photo from Molly Hastings

Hastings said the knock came from Celeste Gorman, who was taking a hike along West Meadow Beach as a volunteer in search of turtles rendered immobile by the cold weather. She ended up finding two in a very short span of time.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration described sea turtles as cold-blooded animals with circulatory systems that can slow to the point of immobility when exposed to extremely cold temperatures. Various factors have helped contribute to the higher prevalence of cold-stunning, like more shallow bodies of water and more dramatic temperature changes, NOAA said.

Hastings said she was well aware of the impact an unpredictable climate has on the wildlife living not only at West Meadow, but across the town and country. She said this small, isolated incident with the sea turtles should serve a greater purpose.

“Hopefully, the turtles will recover from this climate change-caused incident,” Hastings said. “Regardless of their individual fate, let it serve as a gentle reminder that we all are charged of fixing what we’ve done to the great outdoors.”

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By Talia Amorosano

It’s fall, and you know what that means: Winter is around the corner. And we all know what that means is near — that biting cold that makes you want to wrap yourself up in a warm blanket and enjoy a cup of steaming hot-something in front of a cozy fireplace. 

There’s only one problem: You don’t have a fireplace. Or you do, but it doesn’t meet your specific needs. With so many different kinds of fuel, functions and forms, it can be difficult to know which fireplace is the right fit. So if you haven’t already warmed up to the idea of installing a new fireplace in your home, read on to see what each type has to offer.

FUEL OPTIONS

Wood: If you’re into that cozy rustic vibe, a wood-burning fireplace is best at creating the classic woodsy ambiance associated with log cabins and homemade pies.  It gives off that “burning wood” smell (sometimes of hickory or maple) literally, and the sound of crackling logs is the perfect accompaniment to a night of board games with friends around the living room table or a quiet evening alone with a book. On the down side, this kind of fireplace takes lots of work to clean, can clog the chimney and create smoke if not maintained correctly, and while it provides heat in a small space, it sucks the warmth out of other areas of the house.

Gas: According to the Hearth, Patio and Barbeque Association, the popularity of gas fireplaces is on the rise, probably because of the balance of ease and efficiency that they strike. Gas fireplaces offer more use options than wood fireplaces do, often featuring blowers, timers and fans, which give the user more complete control. On the other hand, while many gas fireplaces feature realistic-looking logs and embers, they don’t replicate the smoky smell or crackling of a real fire, and the option of using fallen trees as free fuel is lost.

Electric: Like wood fireplaces, electric fireplaces function well as space heaters. However, they don’t emit harmful fumes (such as carbon dioxide from wood and carbon monoxide from gas) into the home. They are easy to use, requiring nothing more than a simple plug-in and switch-on to function and aren’t easily corroded; but they will also lose power if your home does, and if used often, can be costly components of an energy bill. If you don’t have time for something high maintenance but like the aesthetic value that a fireplace brings, an electrically powered fireplace might just be for you. 

INSTALLMENT OPTIONS

Wall mounted: These kinds of fireplaces must be attached to a chimney and require major construction if a chimney is not already present. While this can be expensive, it can also add value to a home. They are built into a wall and usually lend themselves to the burning of real wood or gas fuel but can also accommodate electric.

Free standing: Depending on the fuel type, these fireplaces can be attached to a ceiling or completely free standing and can require a vent pipe to act as a chimney.  They usually don’t require much construction and have the appearance of large cabinets.

Portable: Perfect for a home built without space for a huge fireplace, portable fireplaces are small, decorative and typically much less expensive than built-in or free-standing fireplaces.  However, these fireplaces are more aesthetic than functional, typically not able to heat a large area or space.