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Sunday, March 25, 2012

This is not March!

Well, I entered a piece to another publication, so here is another one. This actually is my monthly item for the Community Spirit. It is called I'd Rather Be Wright II. My father had Number I. It is in a lighter vein.
                                               
                                                         Seriously, the Weather

To tell the truth, I wasn’t done with winter. This time of year is usually still useful for staying inside and getting house stuff done, or maybe just suffering a bit more so as to lay the ground work for being able to appreciate the warm weather. How can we know warmth if we have not experienced cold? It is just not right and I’m not the only one saying it.

It would seem we have been handed a raw deal. First off, it didn’t snow, meaning the aesthetics of winter, the Currier and Ives idealized fantasy scenarios that are so real here, smacks us like we have no artistic needs. Who wants to have the dynamic, exciting experience of ice fishing if there are only a few brief moments of ice. Sadly, due to inattentiveness and an increasing disposition of sloth, I was not able to muster the impetus to sally forth onto the ice even once because it was here and then it was gone, or as they say, “There it was, gone!”  It was a loser winter and whomever was to blame should be dunced up, put in the corner and told never to do that again.

Today, a day of some 80 degrees, the tragedy of it all started to sink in, and these are just “local” tragedies.  While lounging comfortably, face to the sun, there in my summertime yard throne, afternoon beverage appropriately placed in my relaxed hand, I was taken by two mosquitoes. What? It’s mid-March, sucker. Looking down up on my compromised hand, there thoroughly imbedded deep into my vein was a very healthy venomous insect taking liberties with my person. I was appalled and the violence of  strike almost severed my hand. While my only military service consisted of my time in a British Thermal Unit, the enemy was quickly dispatched. To be confronted like that in March is against the Geneva Conventions. Where is winter?

Now, it is not that I have anything against bugs but a little reprise from them is part of winter, a time to sit back and let the subzero temperatures lay waist to the lousy marauding hoards. There is pleasure in knowing the buzzing buggers are being brutally bludgeoned by a vicious frost.

Then today, I got the word from my wood-foraging brother that in one brief foray into the timber patch,  he attracted no less than twenty of the blood sucking, greedy ticks all with huge smiling faces and smug attitude from knowing that this year they are anticipating a significant rise in their GDP. 

Not only a pathologist can imagine the scene deep in the gizzards of those disease racked, sneaking, almost too-small-to-see deer ticks, the nasty little spirochetes who dish out Lymn  disease were revving up their engines as they began working overtime for the antibiotics cartels and the grim reaper. Maybe the thing to do is get them relaxed, over confident, a little to comfortable in their party and then ten days from now take it down to fifteen below. That’ll teach ‘em.

The bug thing is not the end of it. Truth is, the sap gathering, March loving, snow tromping, Maple syrup producing crowd is all a dither because the only flow came in February. Oh ya, a few of the dudes in the deep dark forest made a little but my 1.5 pint effort was an outright embarrassment making me look like a big city rube who mostly taps oaks, ash and cherry trees. Even the Maple trees dripped of sorrow and puffed out buds not knowing which way to turn. How are they going to feel if frost returns and slaps them across the face.

Speaking of a slapping, a week ago the peepers were out and tonight I received a call from a pond south of Iola where the peepers were in such choir that even over the cell phone the sound was deafening. I was informed that the minute frogs were madly in love. It appeared the  fine spring weather reminded them of southern France in mid May. They were going on long walks,( and some short walks) along the Rhone all the while whispering sweet nothings which here is more like screaming, “I want you  baby.”  They were by all accounts, coupling up in great glee. Is it possible the pond could freeze up again? Talk about a cold bucket of water at just the wrong time.  There would be some blue frogs.

Mind you, these tragedies are not only here. This nonsense is going on all across the country and it might have more than just a few bugs, a handful of frogs, and oh, and us, out of sequence. I want March back.





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