winter's popsicle

During the winter if my dh doesn't clear the snow off the roof fast enough our quaint character home ends up with icicles hanging from it.  We were pretty much icicle free up until last week when it snowed again and again.   The icicles are very pretty and if it were up to me I would just let them hang, but the weight of the hanging ice really isn't great for our new eaves troughs that we had installed last year.  Before my dh got a chance to break off the ice, I thought I would bring a couple into the house for the girls to explore. 


At first I'm not sure they knew what to make of these icicles.  The combination of extreme wet and cold in their hands was very odd.  Miss J seemed very happy while Miss A was seriously examining this cool item.
   

I wonder what these things taste like?

I remember breaking icicles off as a child and doing the same thing, licking the water goodness from them.  I don't even want to think about what else went into that icicle from the structure it was hanging off of  *yuck*    But kids don't think about those sorts of things, thankfully.  They've got plenty of years ahead to become paranoid  & worried about the environment.  As a parent though, I couldn't watch the girls lick the icicles for long until I encouraged them to put them in a container to "watch" what happened next.  I made a decent trade with them offering them freezies to suck on instead of icicles.  They couldn't have been more happy.