The Minnesota Driver’s Manual says this about traffic lights:
A steady yellow light or arrow means “caution.” The signal is about to turn red.
Do not enter the intersection if you can stop safely before doing so. If you cannot stop safely, proceed through the intersection with caution. If you are waiting in the intersection to make a turn, and the signal turns from yellow to red, complete the turn as soon as it is safely possible. Do not back up.
That’s pretty clear, I think, and I imagine that most people who read this would have some idea of what to do when confronted with the change from green to yellow.
But this apparently plain language has me wondering whether the good people of Minnesota speak the same English I do.
It’s become something of a sport for us, when we drive across town, to call out the most egregious traffic light transgressors. The other day, I slowed down for a yellow light and came to a stop as the light turned red. I had plenty of time: the light had turned yellow when I was halfway down the block. I could see in the rearview mirror that the driver immediately behind me was puzzled at my behavior. The car that had been behind in the right lane zipped through with commendable insouciance as the light turned red; the car behind him surged forward with an enthusiasm that would have been admirable were it not so damnably dangerous.
I figure that “stop safely” means that I don’t have to slam on the brakes to bring my car to a halt; judging from what is rapidly becoming a robust data set, Minnesotans take the phrase “cannot stop safely” to cover every case in which they perceive the change from green to yellow. In other words, if you’re a Minnesota driver and you see a yellow light, you have two options: continue to drift along at your current speed until you’re through the intersection (that seems to cover most cases); or, if you find yourself at a great distance from the light when it decides to go from green to yellow, accelerate so that you cruise through the inevitable red light just before perpendicular traffic, now on a green light, makes it to the center of the intersection you’re hurtling through.
We’re enjoying our apartment, despite some quirks. Sophia is finding that hauling her bike up and down from the basement is a chore. Either she has to shoulder the bike and lug it up the stairs, or she has to push her way past a couple of yapping little canines that seem to think (though, on reflection, I believe these dogs are too small to think) that the pathway belongs to them. Nevertheless, the city is a good one to bike in, and Sophia is able to commute to work fairly easily. (When we last lived here, Sophia managed to bike to work almost all year ’round; we still have the “lobster gloves” that made it possible to retain some feeling in the hands when it’s well below freezing.)
Being outdoors here is lovely. The lakes are beautiful. The parks are gorgeous. It doesn’t have the wildlife we got used to in Brackendale, though, as you might have noticed in my last post, we have seen a bald eagle here. There are no bears, and garbage cans need not be locked to prevent ursine depredations. But, too make up for that lack of bears, there is a burgeoning population of rabbits. They’re cute little things, but I suspect that the vegetable gardeners of the area loathe the little critters. There are no coyotes here (as far as I know) to keep a check on their population.
Rabbits are charming, even if they break the hearts and destroy the ambitions of back-yard gardeners. They hop; they twitch their big ears fetchingly; they look up you with their big, brown eyes that proclaim their innocence. And we fall for it: we, even in our assessment of the animal world, are conditioned to make false judgments on the basis of looks.
The other night, a critter that doesn’t benefit from this privilege paid us a visit. I woke to the sounds of distress–a soft, almost whimpered, plea for help from Nathalie. It was well past midnight, and, in my drowsy state, I had a really hard time figuring out what was going on. “Frog,” she croaked. “FROG.”
Note: I’m not at my best when I’m awoken in the middle of the night. I’m also not wild about amphibians, reptiles, or insects. The combination of being roused in the dead of night and allegations about frogs was too much for me to deal with, so, with my customary gallantry, I handed the problem off to Sophia.
It turned out there was a frog. In our bathroom. We’re on the second floor. Sophia, who is pretty good at handling critters of all sorts, tracked the frog down (it had hopped, softly, softly, from the bathroom to the dining room), trapped the poor little amphibian in a bowl, and transported it down two flights of stairs to the great outdoors, where, we hope, it has gone on to a fulfilling life of catching flies and sitting on lily pads.
It took a little while for the household to settle down. Although I could claim none of the credit for dealing with the amphibian crisis, I did want to find out more about how a frog might have ended up in our bathroom.
This, apparently, is a thing, and there are whole websites devoted to the phenomenon of frogs, not just in bathrooms, but frogs in toilets. (I know. Gross.) Apparently this can happen because frogs get on roofs. It quickly gets too hot on the roof for the moisture-loving beasties, so they look for cooler places. One of those cooler places is the sewer vent. Frog then tumbles down the sewer vent into the sewer, and then the poor little thing begins a long arduous journey through the sewer pipes and eventually into a toilet. Definitely gross. But perhaps better for us than what can happen in tropical climates, where snakes have been known to do the same thing.
[By the way — if you read this (and enjoy it), let me know.]
