In my world, Spring is heralded by some unique signs. First and foremost, my horses start to look extra shabby and their fur gets dull before it starts to fall out. The bird feeders start needing refills every morning because, yeah, you guessed it, the raccoons have come out of hibernation. We also have a LOT of O-o-o-possum eating the sunflower seeds this year. Ugly suckers. My dogs start throwing up a lot from eating dead things that have thawed in the woods (I know, ish, ick, bleurgh!)And...drum roll please... I walk out of my house in the morning and come face to antennae with something that looks a lot like a small lobster on my driveway. Yup, the crawdads have emerged and for some inexplicable reason they always go walk-about on my property after emerging from a long, snuggly Winter underground by the creek. I have no idea why...they over-winter in holes beside the creek. So when they pop out of their holes they're just a hop, skip, and a jump (or, in their case, a crawl, amble, and drag) to water. But instead they take a hard right and head through half an acre of trees, leaves, and muck to emerge on my lawn, and eventually the cement pad in front of my garage door.
Go figure.
What's really fun is watching my dogs when they come face to antennae with one of the little guys. Even my sweet, 90 pound huskie/lab mix, Otis, whom we affectionately call the mass murderer due to his unfortunate tendency to murder small critters for sport, (He's mostly reformed now because he absolutely hates when I'm mad at him.)backs off when those pinching claws come up. I need to get a picture of that...talk about David and Goliath!
Yeah, we have the usual signs too, budding trees, greening grass, mud up to our armpits, potholes erupting in roads...but everybody has those signs of Spring. In my world, Spring emerges to a slightly different tune. And I welcome it happily. Because Winter can be a beautiful woman with flowing white hair and sparkling eyes, but Spring is a sprightly siren. And I admit that I'm a sucker for her sweet song.
Happy Spring everybody!
8 comments:
What a visual description. I'm not sure where you are but I can picture those things walking through your yard and coming face to face (so to speak) with your dogs. So far the only thing that speaks Spring here is the daffodils popping out of the ground. I'm sure we'll still get at least one more snowfall since it's only the middle of March. In fact,I'm looking for it the last weekend of March. I hope I'm wrong, but we'll see. Anyway, again. Great description.
LOL! I love your description. The antennae part had me giggling. Great writing!
Hey Kayelle!
I'm glad you enjoyed it. It is fun having my own little lobster-look-alikes. If I ever sell the house I can use them as a selling point. "And in the Spring, crawdads do walk-about on your lawn..." Do you think potential buyers might squig out at that? Maybe I'd better keep it on the down low. Although it is better than the six foot long snake WE saw when we were moving in. Har! Thanks for stoppin' by!
Hey Roseanne!
Thanks for stopping by! I'm in central Indiana. Hopefully we're done with snow and cold here. Although I can remember, in my youth, we had a couple of pretty significant snowfalls in March. Hopefully Siren Spring will be singing in your area soon. I'll cross all my digits for you!
LOL Too funny! Thanks for the laugh! My mother has been battling a raccoon over her feeders too!
You know spring has sprung in Arkansas when the daffodils pop up in spite of the cold, my cats' shedding becomes a force of nature and the local weather stations start hawking emergency weather radios. Oh, and the tornadoes. I do get the occasional crawdad too. Ugly looking critters for sure!
I think we feed more seeds to those dang raccoons than we do the birds, and they're so obstinate. I turn the light on in the morning to warn them the dogs are coming out and half the time they don't run until the dogs are on top of them. Stupid creatures. When 90 pounds of mass murderer is descending on you, you'd better run like hell or your day is seriously going to take a turn for the worse! #:0) Fortunately we have trees nearby they can climb to escape becoming another statistic in MM's criminal record. Har!
MM huh? And here I thought that was ebook speak for male/male... lol
We have squirrels and raccoons here. The birds manage to get their share, though, and all we have to do is open the front door and they all scatter.
No crawdads though. Maybe they don't live in Georgia. Not a crawdad kind of person. Seen a few, went "ew". ;0
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