I can tell the weather is starting to change for the better. At least I think that. In the back of my mind every morning, I still consider that if there were a foot of snow outside the window, it wouldn’t surprise me. The thing is, I still haven’t accepted spring yet. I’m still a little gun-shy. Hopefully, I can really relax and begin enjoying everything soon, like maybe near the end of September. Anyway, let’s see if there’s a column in there somewhere, maybe with lots of pictures. Let’s get it on.
HOLY SHIT, IT’S SPRING ALREADY
Well, spring has sprung … like a rickety-assed jack-in-the-box that isn’t scaring anyone when it opens. In fact, it’s mostly a nice surprise when it finally happens. It’s weird when things change though because, well, things are different. For example, I went in the yard the other day and there were about five hundred fucking bees flying around all over the place. I don’t know where they came from or what their endgame was, but they weren’t there the previous day.
I was a little scared the dogs would think they were crispy little energy bites, so I put a leash on the boys when I took them out to pee. Seriously, what animal wouldn’t want to be tethered to a slow man if a bee was chasing it? The bees were gone the next day, but let me tell you, I will be a bit more cautious the first time I mow the yard. Actually, all of spring has been a little off thus far.
Every year we get these goddamned robins that build nests at our house. Now, I’m fine with birds in general and robins in particular, but our robins are perhaps the stupidest goddamned creatures God ever put on a planet. They are, in fact, so ignorant, I’m often surprised that they aren’t in a reality show.
For the last three or four years, they fly back from the South, probably Georgia if I was guessing, and build the worst fucking nests I have ever seen. The nests are bad for the birds, the birds’ offspring, and also for us humans who happen to be paying the mortgage on the place to begin with. It’s almost like they hate their children before they’re even born. It’s the human equivalent of a mother having a child through the rolled down window of a moving car.
Last year they built a nest above the door we use every day. They even seemed annoyed when we would use said door to enter our house. They still kept building the infernal thing though. At least that one was higher. They built one once that was about two feet off the ground. I even made a sign for the dogs that pointed to it that said, “Good Eatin’”
They built one on a windowsill last year and that was actually pretty fun to watch the babies when they hatched. Still, we had only a thin screen between us and the baby birds for most of their early development. I’m sure they assumed we were the godparents, if not the regular parents. I was almost tempted to hang a worm from my mouth and try to feed them one day when their horrible parents ignored them for most of a morning. If there is still any question about their stunning incompetence, this year they built a nest on the bird feeder, you know, where all the birds go to eat.
Also, speaking of birds, I heard a bang on the window last Saturday and I immediately knew a bird had flown into it and knocked itself the fuck out. I was about to go outside and check on its status when the phone rang, so the entire incident slipped my mind. About twenty minutes later, I let the dogs out in the yard and holy freaking crap, the brown dog, Bruce, found the tiny bird and thought I was holding some sort of morbid canine Easter egg hunt just for him.
It was tough to tell if the bird was still alive,because, well, he put the entire thing in his mouth. It was just a little finch, so I’m pretty sure that if it was conscious it was able to actually fly around in the dog’s mouth. I attempted to make noises and wave my arms and try just about anything to make him drop the bird. It turns out, however, that this dog doesn’t really like dropping birds once he has them in his mouth. Hunting dog, my ass.
I got the brilliant idea to pull a piece of chicken skin off the rotisserie chicken in the refrigerator and use it to distract him. Not understanding my plan, he took the chicken skin, wrapped it around the finch and swallowed hard. Nature is sort of creepy when you see it up close.
BIG ENOUGH TO KILL A PERSON
Large statues, like that Lincoln one down by Charleston, genuinely terrify me. It scares the piss out of me. I’m not sure if I think it’s real and about to attack or what, but seriously, just creepy.
I remember seeing it when I was a little kid, but I feel like it was somewhere else. Either way, I drive by it every so often and I can see the head sticking out through the trees. Jesus H. Christ, it’s fucking spooky. I’ve never had the stones to drive back there and get a closer look because I have several other ways of making myself feel unsettled and scared. Also, as I mentioned earlier, there’s always a chance it could fucking come to life and attack me.
I’m also petrified of that giant statue at Curtis Orchard. In many ways, it’s even scarier than the Lincoln statue because it’s armed with a bow and arrow. It just feels creepy and wrong to me, actually on several different levels in this case. I mean, it’s already prepared to attack. All it needs to do is come to life and we’re all dead as shit. Yes, the shoes make it seem less frightening, but there’s still, you know, that big fucking bow and arrow.
Strangely, I’m not especially frightened of regular statues; it’s just the ones that aren’t made of stone.
EXTRAS
Yeah, I bought Fall Out Boy’s new record. Yeah, it’s totally not all that good. Yeah, I sort of like it anyway. It’s the pleasure I feel most guilty about.
I want to put a TV in the garage now. This is about as good of an idea as putting a toilet in the kitchen. Sure, it might be awesome to do certain things in certain rooms, but it’s a slippery, slippery slope, my friend.
Buona sera, senorina, kiss me goodnight.