Well, oil prices are up, and an expected long, cold winter in the United States is to blame. To some American families, this means bigger heating bills. To some -- and I hope my parents are reading this as they scrape the frost off their bathroom mirror -- it means subjecting their entire family to the humiliation of wearing coats and earmuffs indoors. What it does not mean, in almost any circumstance, is getting down the fur from the attic. Better to catch pneumonia than risk the ice-cold contempt of your animal-loving countryfolk.


Fur is out in much of the Western world. There are a few grim women in New York City still wearing their minks, but that I-dare-you-to-spray-paint-me look carved on their faces isn't exactly the stuff of glamour. Those types wear fur just because they know it's bad. Most people stick to benign, politically unchallengeable synthetic fabrics. They look like human marshmallows, but they're perfectly warm, and at least they're not hurting anybody.


Russia can be a liberating place for foreigners for a number of reasons. My apologies to all the little woodland creatures, but fur does seem to be one of them. You don't see too many Russians worrying about fur here. You don't see them worrying about smoking or burning trash in the dvor either, but I digress.


The New York-to-Moscow express flights are like an eight-hour emancipation. The foreigners furtively smuggle their warm little bundles onto the plane, solemnly tuck them in the back of the overhead bins and count the minutes till touchdown, when they get to gleefully pull them back down and don them without anyone looking askance.


This last time, I had a little fur of my own: a modest strip of fairly pedestrian coyote hair on the hood of an otherwise completely unnatural-fiber coat. Buying it was like pulling teeth -- human teeth, of course, and only in instances of mutual consent -- not because of any personal doubts but because of the new-world sensibilities of the saleswoman, who had obviously been prepped to deal with morally distressed shoppers.


The coyote fur, she said, was used only to serve purposes of warmth and water deflection, and was in no way decorative. The manufacturer, she added, does not condone the brutal hunting and trapping of animals, and on principle uses only that fur which it finds in the form of road kill. Very appealing. And last but not least, she whispered conspiratorially, coyotes are such destructive animals.


Better a mischievous carnivore squashed flat by a car than an industrious little rabbit shot down in the prime of life, the argument apparently went. At this point in the sales pitch, it was getting very hard not to feel sorry for the coyote.