Colds that won’t quit. Clouds of salt dust blowing around on highways. Axle-busting frost heaves. Snowmobiles parked in frozen mud, for sale. Last week’s mud time, then a fast freeze.

It’s a weird winter that breeds ill temper. More often than is my style, I am peevish, critical, and quick to anger. Example: Flashing my headlights righteously: “What’s your problem?! There’s a law, ya know: windshield wipers on, headlights on.”

Or, to a fellow shopper, “Pay that for a cucumber? I don’t think so.”

Whatever the weather or the mood it spawns, road trips for business, pleasure or health care are necessary. On just such a mission, my husband and I were in Portland last week. As we drove along Congress Street – in that Back Bay stretch where coyotes have been sighted – suddenly, essence of skunk assailed us. February. Portland. Skunk? Later, the unmistakable scent wafted through the car windows, this time on Route 26 near West Paris.

“Skunks aren’t true hibernators,” Mark Stadler, director of the wildlife division of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, explained to me last week. On a mild day, they’ll stir and begin looking for food. This mostly warm winter, Stadler remarked, “makes you think there’s something to all the global warming talk.”

While a mild winter is wildlife-friendly to turkeys and deer, for instance, it’s tough for little mammals and rodents that normally shelter under the snow cover; they’re easy prey this winter.

A brilliant cardinal (the Ohio state bird) is a regular visitor in Newry of late. Stadler has a friend who’s seen a bluebird and he’s heard reports of forsythia budding and crocuses blooming. February.

Despite the odd weather, the good times keep rolling on. An afternoon with birthday girls and sisters Ginny Macfarland of Hartford and Adelaide Ray of Norway, 88 and 92, respectively, makes old age look good.

Last weekend’s variety show to benefit the Jane deFrees scholarship fund was a hit and there’s more ahead: State Street Jazz will play in Rumford’s Municipal Auditorium on Sunday, at 2 p.m. March 12. They’ve played in Boston, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., even Bethel! Mt. Valley High’s musical, “Kilroy Slept Here,” goes up March 30. And don’t give up on winter: There’s more of it ahead, too.

Linda Farr Macgregor lives with her husband, Jim, in Rumford. She is a freelance writer and author of “Rumford Stories.” Contact her at [email protected].