What happened: The temperature rose during the day a bit, melting some of the ice and snow and leaving slush on top of the ice. Then the Sun went down, and several animals had their feet frozen to the ice by the freezing slush. They soon died of exposure to the extreme cold. Note that one dog had a dead rodent that had climbed atop it to try to avoid the same fate. Once they were frozen solid, the man came along and kicked them over the next day, when the ice was soft and slushy again.