So remember when you were little and it snowed a lot? So much so that you could do even better than a fort...you could make a snow cave! Well, make sure that you don't do it in the vicinity of a parking lot, or you could end up getting plowed into a snowbank!

Two Windham teenagers were trapped in a snowbank for more than six hours during Wednesday's blizzard after a plow truck smashed the snow cave they had built in a parking lot off Route 302. Although rescuers took the boys to Maine Medical Center, the two were in surprisingly good shape late Wednesday, police said. "They are thanking their lucky stars," said Windham police Sgt. Peter Fulton.

Christopher Stearns, 18, and Benjamin Wooster, 17, left for the parking lot of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish around 1 p.m. Wednesday. The two built a large snow cave, similar to those mountain climbers use to keep warm on expeditions, and were inside it when a plow truck cleared the church's parking lot around 2 p.m., Fulton said. The driver did not see the teenagers, and plowed right into their cave, smashing them into a 10-foot-high snowbank, he said.

Stearns and Wooster were trapped in the snowbank until about 8:10 p.m., when police and firefighters dug them out of the mound, Fulton said. Parents began looking for the boys around 5 p.m., and called police about an hour later.

[Police] tried to call the two on their cell phones to determine where to dig, but the snowbanks behind the church were so dense that they didn't hear a ring, he said. "We turned everything off. We just sat there and listened," Fulton said of the firefighters, police and state troopers who converged on the parking lot.

Stearns and Wooster were apparently unable to move. When police finally dug them out, Wooster was prone and Stearns was standing, Fulton said. Police first reached Wooster, who told police that his friend was nearby. Both were able to walk --with some assistance -- after the incident, Fulton said. The tightly packed snow likely provided insulation for the two, but Wooster was found without a hat. "He was certainly losing body heat," Fulton said.

I'm surprised the kids didn't hear the plow going around before it ended up plowing them. Maybe next time they'll make a window in their cave.