We got a nice snow last night for one of my activities which is “I wonder what critters are living around my house and maybe living in it?”

When you get a light snow, take a walk around your house and look for tracks in the snow.  You may be surprised at how many you see.  Then try to identify them.  Here’s just one site where you can find all sorts of tracks: http://www.bear-tracker.com/

If you Google “animal tracks” you will come up with a bunch of sites and even some nice cards you can print out.

Next, follow some of those tracks to see if any lead to your house.  That’s how I found out last winter that field mice had established a way to get into our house.  You may also see some tracks from larger animals like raccoon and woodchuck.  This morning I found fresh rabbit tracks and when I followed them to the holly bushes which line our driveway, I found the rabbit, sitting under the bush, protected from the cold and wind by the snow cap on the bush.

Many of the tracks you will find are from animals you never see because you are in bed while they are running around the neighborhood.  That light snow on the ground is your window to an amazing amount of animal activity when you aren’t around.

-Hank Manz

Attention All Scouts seeking First Aid Merit Badge!

We will be having the second session for the merit badge THIS FRIDAY AFTERNOON from 3:00-4:45pm at St. Brigid’s.

If you plan on attending, we would also appreciate you providing $5 dollars for covering pizza and drinks.

Please CONFIRM whether or not you will be attending by THURSDAY EVENING.

Thank you!!

Rita Ross

With Town elections coming up and with Town Meeting close behind, it is probably time for another run at Citizenship In The Community Merit Badge.

The class in the past has been a little different, partly because many New England towns have a different form of government and partly because traditional Civics classes can be very dry.  Government in Lexington is highly participatory and it depends on a huge number of volunteers so I want you to get some of the flavor of how things really work.  Of course we do all the standard stuff like meeting the Town Manager, the Budget Director, the Police and Fire Chiefs and all of that, but we also finish off with a Town Meeting for the Town of Lexingtonia, a small town amazingly like Lexington.  You will all become citizens of that town for the duration of the class.  You will develop a warrant article to do something, you will form into precincts, create a Board of Selectmen and other boards, and then you will debate your article to see if it will pass.  In the past the Town Meeting of Lexingtonia has debated weighty issues such as whether to limit doughnut shops in the Center, and if artificial turf should be installed for the LHS football field.  The outcome has almost always been a surprise and quite often the discussion has gone on long after the class was over.

The neat thing is that we really need at least a few parents to help out with this because they will serve as the Board of Selectmen and other boards while the Scouts form the Town Meeting.

Typically we meet for five weeks after school in the Selectmen’s Meeting Room in the Town Office Building.  The last meeting is the Town Meeting.

Let’s try Monday from 3:15 or 3:30 to 5:00 PM for the class.  Let me know if you are interested in the class and if the time is suitable.  Anybody may attend the class, by the way, including non-Scouts.  Oh yes, you get to sit in the chairs used by the Board of Selectmen and you get to be on TV.

-Hank Manz

Troop 160 photographers,

The Troop is planning to make updated poster boards at the January 27 meeting so they’ll be ready for the Webelos visit on February 2.  We’ve gotten discs and USB drives and URLs with photos from several folks, but would still like some more.
Again, please edit your pictures down to a reasonable number (tens not hundreds of shots per event), burn them to a CD, put them on a flash drive, or post them on a website and get them to our tireless Scoutmaster, Hank Manz, who will be printing the pictures before the January 27 meeting.

Thanks,
Mike Ames