It's even more bizarre than that. The Mounties reconstructed what happened; it appears that he attempted to climb through an open ground floor window in the back of the house. Unable to do so because of his heavy parka, he apparently took the parka off and tossed it through the open window. He still couldn't climb through the window, now he was locked outside with no parka.

The crowning irony was that the cops found matches in the pocket of his parka. <img src="images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

The news report didn't mention whether alcohol was involved. Myself, I think he just didn't realise how much trouble he was in until he had more or less passed the point of no return (which was probably when he tossed the parka through the window, rather than get it dirty by dropping it on the ground). Most of us probably assume that we could climb through a ground floor window without too much trouble, but how many of us have actually tried it? <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

It may have just been stupidity, but I think there's a distinction between stupidity and thoughtlessness. (I remember a fellow soldier and I burned up an entire book of matches once trying unsuccessfully to light a Coleman lantern in the wind. Finally, we clued in and erected a wind-break, but we had no matches left. We spent several more minutes trying to light the lantern using a BIC lighter; finally the light came on again and I realised that we could use the BIC to set fire to one of the spent matches.) <img src="images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" /> I don't want to blow my own horn, but I'm not "stupid" in the conventional sense; I have a Master's degree in mathematics, among other things. I just didn't stop to think about what we were doing.

I personally suspect the farmer in question was suffering from hypothermia-induced mental confusion, possibly combined with panic and maybe, in the end, a desire to just "lie down and get it over with".