New York City Icicle

I am calling this a New York City icicle, although it could occur in other cities, I guess.

Any city-dweller surely will bemoan the phenomenon of plastic bags, usually from grocery stores, getting stuck in trees.

They are an eyesore, to say the least. The writer Ian Frazier wrote a piece (abstract here) about it in The New Yorker about four years ago.

Anyway, take a bag in a tree, add snow, then heat slightly causing said snow to melt. Preferably there is a small hole in the bag, causing dripping snow to freeze as an icicle. Behold: the New York City icicle. Any icicle on an awning or dangling from a gutter could be from anywhere. There is something ugly and special about this one.

A lovely glistening shard of ice clinging to a plastic bag, twisting in the wind, trying to break free of the tree that refuses to let go. Nature and litter's bastard child.

It made me smile.