Snowing!

First snow: You run out without a coat or anything and you raise your face to the sky. The snow on your lips tastes like vanilla, and the way it melts on your eyelashes feels like someone else crying for you. Then you stick out your tongue to savor it properly, then you whirl around with your arms outstretched, then your neighbors call the ambulance for you.

Henrietta the Hound got on her hindlegs to look out through the window, and she got so excited. She had to run to the other side of the house to see if it was snowing there, too. When I let the dogs out in the fenced yard they ran around sticking their tongues out and whirling with their tails outstretched. Then they made dogangels in the snow. Conclusion: to go crazy about the first snow is a general survival instinct that has been hard-wired into us through millennia of harsh rooting-out of all those who shudder when it gets a little bit chilly.