Shut the Hell Up Already!

This is probably my least favorite time of the year. I'm not talking about the thin layer of yellow pollen that covers everything in the spring, nor am I speaking of the fact that I have to mow my lawn again--honestly, I think I'm beginning to develop a Hankhillian relationship with my lawn. Heh. Lawn care.

No, it's not that I don't appreciate spring at all; there are a lot of aspects about spring that I really, really like! For instance, fewer college chicks wearing sweaters and long pants at Target. And the fact that the corner where my computer desk sits isn't fucking freezing every night when I sit down to check out fruitstompingvixens.net work on my latest manuscript or play a video game or stalk you all on Facebook read your latest words of wisdom on certain social networking sites.

But, this time of year is madness. The weather has some serious bi-polar issues, and it leaves me decidedly unamused. Oh sure, it's 80 degrees during the day, sunny, pleasant, warm. But then it plunges into some sort of subarctic freeze at night. It's too warm to put on pajamas to sleep when I go to bed, but during the night I'm clinging to the side of my wife, siphoning off any spare heat she can afford, and thinking "if I get up to close the window, it won't be as cold in here, but I might freeze solid on the way to the sash..." I won't even go into the phenomenon I refer to as "perma-turtle".

And while this might be nice when those aforementioned college chicks who are no longer wearing sweaters and long pants when they get caught in the evening temperature swoon, thus causing their--*ahem*--"headlights to come on", I don't appreciate the bone-shaking shivering cold that creeps into the bedroom at night. Naturally, this chill is exacerbated by the fan that I must have blowing over me at all times while I'm trying to sleep. I can do cold, I can do stuffy, but I can't do cold and stuffy!

However, the worst part of this time of year is the early morning cacophony that rousts me from my slumber long before the soul-piercing beeping of my alarm clock is set to awaken me. Yes, those horny little feathered fuckers are the bane of my predawn hours.

I might have mentioned it before, but I essentially live in the woods. My house is surrounding on two sides by a pretty solid swath of vegetation, and on the left of my neighbor's house, there's also a pretty good amount of trees and forest. It's a bird's paradise, and they love to proclaim their love for the woody world around them at the top of their highly-efficient little lungs. Cardinals, mockingbirds, robins, chickadees, titmice, sapsuckers and some little fucker that says "twEET TWeet chirp chirp chirp" conspire against me in those hours of the false dawn.

The worst, though, is the fucking red-shouldered hawk. Ever hear one of these things? You know how a red-tailed hawk has a high, keening wail? A red-shouldered hawk has a call that is a mixture of a klaxon going off and a puppy being curb-stomped. And they never shut the fuck up. I totally understand why Tripp Isenhour pelted one with golf balls to get it to shut the hell up.

So, there I lie, in my bed, teeth chattering, trembling, freezing to death, exhausted to the point of tears, with a myriad of feathered menaces flitting from one branch to another, screaming to one another about their territory, their sex life, and how nice it will be to see the sun in several hours.

It's enough to make a guy want to close the window.

Something Prosey

It always begins simply enough. Though the beginning of spring is often quiet, you can sense the change of the seasons nonetheless. The ground softens. The early morning grass is slick with moisture. There's a crispness remaining in the air that still makes your breath fog when you exhale, but it doesn't steal the air from your throat.

The raucous, repeating rhythm of a cardinal's call fills the air, accompanied by the lonesome, plaintive cry of a mourning dove. Birds' voices, once familiar, now nearly forgotten, now return on the winds. The canopy above, still bare, still filled with thousands of fingers clawing at the sky, is alive with whistles, peeps and calls. Birds flit from one branch to another, calling--constantly calling--to one another, proclaiming "Here I am!" or "This tree is mine" or simply to broadcast the joy of the warm sun on their breast.

The earth stretches, waking from a long winter's hibernation. As it stretches, it works the warmth of the sun, the vibrancy of its rays into the deep and cold places beneath it. It drinks of the morning's dew, absorbs the day's heat, revels in the passing rain, practically dancing beneath the drops as they fall from the heavens.

The earth-brown forest floor, long slumbering beneath a thick layer of brown, dry leaves becomes lush and green overnight. A verdant carpet spreads itself between the trees, waking them. The wooden fingers stretch toward the sky, tiny buds displaying themselves, blooming forth, and then falling away as the canopy slowly asserts itself once more. The birds are hidden, but their songs have a more lasting, more haunting quality to them now.

The thrumming of a woodpecker echoes through the trees, invisible behind the young, fresh leaves. Squirrels laugh and chitter, chasing one another up and down trees, around the boughs and boles, along the forest floor. Deer, always timid and quiet, seek the quiet and the darkness of the deep forest, venturing forth to nibble upon the fresh, delicious fare around the edges of the woods.

Now the wind sighs, carrying not the bitter teeth of winter, but the promise of warmth and the piquant aroma of life reawakening. Gentle is its song, carrying the susurrations of the leaves waving in the wind and the calls of the birds, and rain, far distant, but promised by the evening.

To stand among it all--wind, trees, earth--is to revel in the joy of life itself, in the reawakening of the world as it looks upon the warm spring sun. Standing amongst it, taking it in, enjoying it for the very pleasures it promises, the life-giving and sustaining forces it offers, one is left to wonder one thing:

"When the fuck are those goddamned squirrels going to stop climbing on my birdfeeder?"