WE DO QUEER things, we Mainers, as the snow continues to wrap around us, squeezing us out of house and home — and our sanity.

Cabin fever is real.

We wander from room to room, muttering to ourselves. We clean out closets and cabinets and re-arrange dishes on shelves.

As the snow kept piling itself higher and higher on our roof last week and people began to panic about too much weight on roofs, we started to fidget.

Years ago we sold our roof rake at a lawn sale, thinking we’d never need it again. With global warming and the winters becoming less severe, surely we’d not have to worry.

But this winter proved us wrong.

Watching 3 feet of snow on the south side of our roof turn into 4 and 5 feet, we began to ponder the possibility that one night we’d hear a giant roar and feel a great gust of wind blow into our living room as all the snow would come crashing down onto our napping felines.

“You haven’t shoveled your roof ?” a colleague asked me in disbelief.

I went home and told my husband we might want to get the roof shoveled.

When our friend Dave came to visit one day, Phil asked if he could borrow his roof rake.

“Sure, I’ll bring it over, but I think you need your own rake” was the reply.

A couple of days later, Dave told me he’d scout out roof rakes at hardware stores and buy one if I approved, which I did.

I seriously doubted they’d have any in stock, but he scored, finding me one for $59 — $63 with tax.

When I delivered the rake to Phil, he seemed not to react much. I attributed it to the price, as the last time he bought one, 30 years ago, it was only $30.

Just then, Bill, our contractor, called to say he was in Florida but has a crew that could come and shovel the snow off our roof for a good deal if we wanted.

“Oh, no,” I said, “We bought a roof rake and plan to do it ourselves.”

Bill tried to discourage me. He said he’s 25 years younger than we are and pretty rugged, and even he has trouble wrangling a roof rake in this kind of snow.

Bill has never steered us wrong, but I declined, thanked him and told him to enjoy all that sun.

Come Saturday morning, before we were to get another 2 feet of snow (a storm that never delivered), we donned our arctic gear and headed to the backyard where Phil promptly started raking the porch roof from the deck.

It worked well and we were psyched.

But raking the house roof itself, a feat that required we perch ourselves chest deep in snow, was another story.

Undeterred however, I hoisted the rake up onto the roof and started methodically scraping downward.

It wasn’t 20 minutes of whacking the snow, scraping and flailing around in several feet of snow myself that I concluded roof-raking was not my forte.

Winded, cold and fearing I might have a heart attack, I declared to Phil that we’d better call Bill.

“We’re too old for this,” I said.

Phil conceded he never intended to rake the roof at all. The blank look on his face when I presented the new rake to him was a result of his figuring that, if he asked to borrow Dave’s rake, Dave would bring it over and rake the roof himself. Phil didn’t plan on actually buying a new one.

I dialed up Bill, who lay poolside in sunny Florida.

“Can you send your crew ’round?” I asked, meekly.

I could hear the “I told you so” in his voice as he promised to get someone there by Monday.

Relieved and satisfied we had made the right decision, we arrived home from errands Monday evening to find the roof black instead of white, piles of snow around the house where earlier there had been none — and two cats who normally greet us yawning and stretching — looking stunned and rather PO’d.

But, hey, we learned our lesson — when the raking gets tough, the tough call a contractor.

The only downside is that we now have this pristine roof rake and no good use for it.

Maybe we’ll ship it down to Boston.

Or maybe next winter will be a bust or … something.

Amy Calder has been a Morning Sentinel reporter 27 years. Her column appears here Mondays. She may be reached at acalder@centralmaine.com

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