6:15AM: Gladys Short, while shoveling, stops to clear a blocked nostril, discharging the contents of her sinuses into the nearest snowdrift.
6:39AM: Stray mucosal particles interact in unlikely ways with the fine matter present in the snowdrift (road salt, ice, snow, dirt, dirty ice, fossilized dog feces), undergoing biogenesis and producing the first simple single-flaked organisms.
8:43AM: The first multi-flaked organism evolves within the snowdrift. A lightweight creature, it reflects heat from the sun and uses this to melt its competitors so that it might add their liquified mass to its own.
10:39AM: A branch of multiflaked life develops icy body tissue, leading to a sudden profusion in radical and experimental bauplans deemed the Brunch Explosion.
1:00PM: Life reaches the harsh and exposed surface of the snowdrift.
2:15PM: Life on the snowdrift is nearly obliterated by a passing snowplow.
3:34PM: Life on the snowdrift is nearly obliterated by Cheryl Thompson doing a neighbour a solid and helping with the five additional centimeters left on her front steps.
4:50PM: Life on the snowdrift is nearly obliterated by a frolicking on-leash labrador retriever (age one year six months).
5:47PM: A new ice age begins on the snowdrift as the sun rapidly descends.
6:20PM: A species of microsnowman arises on the snowdrift as part of an adaptive radiation of tiny ridiculous bipeds that constantly obsess over gossip and sex.
6:22PM: Microsnowmen spread across the snowdrift’s surface.
6:29PM: Complex microsnowmen societies form around rich surface deposits of fallen icicles, which are used to construct weapons to take other’s icicle deposits and palisades to defend one’s own and not much else.
6:31:48 PM: In an effort to understand the vastness of the universe around them, three grand theories purporting to explain microsnowmanity and its place in the snowdrift: Metacryocity (which holds that all beings containing an uneven number of flakes should be exterminated); Zeta Anti-Metacryocity (which holds that all beings containing an even number of flakes should be exterminated); and Remoulded Slipperyism (which holds that all microsnowmen beings contain an immortal essence that slips away on death to a better place as one’s foot might slip on good quality ice, and so it is best to exterminate everyone).
6:31.50PM: After long centuries of bitter warfare and insularity, beleaguered microsnowmen in the Large Surface Depression forge a tentative connection with their long-lost brethren of the Top Crust Overhang for mutual aid and defense.
6:31.51PM: The Large Surface Depression betrays, invades, and repeatedly annexes the Top Crust Overhang, coveting its vast crusty ice deposits.
6:31.52PM: New Crustland splits into three feuding states over whether or not they should keep invading nearby polities, switch to browbeating them into submission through humiliating trade demands, or annihilate them with snowballs from above.
6:31.53PM: In a productive and exciting span of time, semiautomatic and automatic snowballers, barbed tinsel, the tank, antifreeze, chemically unfrozen dog urine, deliberate snowslide, and the H (heater) bomb are developed and shared by, for, and with the microsnowmen at the cost of millions of generous and grateful lives.
6:31.56PM: A tentative and fragile truce holds the snowdrift as it sits under the threat of being melted into water by H-bombs. This truce is enforced by building more H-bombs.
6:31.57PM: The tentative and fragile truce sort of ends without violence after The Hole By The Shovel’s Handle undergoes a partial societal collapse while in possession of the largest H-bomb arsenal on the snowdrift. In the spirit of coexistence, all agree to keep their H-bombs close to hand.
6:31.58PM: The snowdrift’s surface begins to show warping and disfiguration due to the side effects of every microsnowman of means now owning a private and massively oversized Zamboni that runs on a series of complex ice-based mirrors that channel huge quantities of light and warmth directly into the snowdrift. Nothing can possibly be done about this.
6:31.59PM: Facing increased snowdrift instability to the point where the ground itself is shaking and sliding beneath their feet, the greatest and most powerful leaders of The Large Surface Depression, New Crustland, Old Snowangel, and The Hole By The Shovel’s Handle agree to invade all their neighbours and pour all available resources and time into developing newer and more expensive ways to arrange decorative bouquets of water molecules that spell out flattering messages to themselves.
6:32PM: Gladys Short arrives home and discovers her front steps a mess of mangled slush and snow, says ‘for FUCK’S sake,’ and fiercely dismantles the snowdrift, killing every single multiflaked organism.
6:55PM: Glady makes herself hot chocolate with many extra-large marshmallows.