A versatile word is “snow.” It can mean the frantic static of a television’s dead channel or the stuff Crockett and Tubbs tracked down in hyper-stylized Miami. It is also a type of large, two-masted, 17th century sailing ship. However, most commonly, it is what makes a Christmas white and Frosty a man.

But as a verb, it can have a more sinister meaning. To snow someone is to deceive, to mislead him or her with fiction for your own gain. This deceptive nature of snow makes it a useful tool for some and a hazard for others.

Two masters of using snow to their advantage are the meadow vole and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The meadow vole (Microtus pennsylvanicus) is a small rodent that looks like a squatty mouse with a short, furry tail. You are not likely to find one in your pantry because they prefer the clean country air of a grassy meadow. Voles are motivated highway makers, parting grasses and clipping the bases of stems to create little runways that criss-cross to form an impressive network to and from food and nests of woven dry grass, lined with fine plant material.

Dick Cheney is very industrious, too. He began as an intern in the Nixon administration and then worked for Donald Rumsfeld, who was at the time the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. Cheney continued to build his network in Washington to include such positions as chief of staff for President Ford and secretary of defense for President George H. Bush, where he ochestrated the invasion of Panama and Operation Desert Storm. Once Bill Clinton took office, Cheney migrated to the greener pastures of the private sector, where he was the CEO of Halliburton. Finally, he returned to government as vice president with his former boss’ son in 2000.

Voles do not have the longevity of Dick Cheney. A typical vole rarely celebrates its 12-month birthday because they are just the right eating size for owls, hawks, foxes and the family cat. Apparently, like Jell-O, there is always room for vole. The vole reproductive rate reflects its popularity on the menu of so many predators. A female vole is sexually active at only 45 days and will produce about 10 litters of seven young a year. At this rate, it’s not uncommon to reach densities of 200-300 voles per acre in preferred habitats.

Howver, the fall is not a good time of year for voles because the leafless landscape provides little protection from predators. If voles were religious, it’s likely that at this time they would be praying for snow. Not only does it help hide them from predators, but under a thick, deceptively serene blanket of powder, voles party. The temperature is usually several degrees warmer and they tunnel with abandon from food source to food source, safe from the keen eyes of hawks. Even the acute hearing of a fox can be foiled if the snow is deep enough. For certain, life is good for a vole in a snowy winter.

Snow is also important to Dick Cheney. For decades, he has been tunneling under political snow to horde political power and to practice his invasion skills. Some would say that President George W. Bush is nothing more than a snow fort behind which Cheney sits to direct the country. As vice president, all he needed was a perfect storm to launch another invasion. He got it on Sept. 11, 2001. As the nation sought justice in Afghanistan, Cheney fired the cannons into the hills to trigger an avalanche that would pave the way to his goal: Iraq.

A flurry of rhetoric fell on the American people: Stockpiles of WMDs, uranium deals in Africa, color-coded terror alerts and shady rendezvous between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 terrorists. Cheney ordered a fleet of snow blowers (Carl Rove, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Fox News) to blanket the country with an overwhelming blizzard of mis-information. When skeptics challenged the approach, Cheney fired off slushy snowballs packed with charges of weak-kneed liberalism and anti-patriotism. During the war for the hearts and minds of the American people, the VP operated with the flair and pizzazz of the Snow Miser, turning everthing to snow in his clutch—he’s too much.

As of late, the climate is begining to warm. The prosperity of both voles and Cheney melt away as the heat is turned up and the snow melts. Cheney’s snow got soft when Joseph Charles Wilson published an op ed piece revealing the African uranium story to be untrue and charging the administration with a snow job to inflate the Iraq threat. Simiularly, the Iraq Survey Group revealed that no WMDs were present in Iraq. And Mr. Rock Salt himself, journalist Seymour Hersh, published numerous articles revealing misinformation about the Iraq war and also issued a snow advisory on preemptive plans against Iran. With Democratic control of both the House and Senate in the 2006 elections, the Cheney snow is beginning to melt and all invovled are wincing in the light of day.

Voles, too, dread the melt. When the snow disappears they once again become easy prey, which is essential good news for the predators that rely on the prolific voles to survive. To see evidence of meadow vole’s winter easy life, simply go to a grassy area in the spring and look for twisty trails along the ground and follow them until you find a brown mound which is likely their winter nest.

Robert Burns almost had it right when he wrote, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” He very well could have been talking about a field mouse, which is a common name for the meadow vole. Other good words of wisdom come from an un-named source who said, “Policitians say they have crystal balls, but they are only shaking snow globes.”