March 8, 2012

It’s a miraculous day. March 8th, my granddaughter’s 3rd birthday, and I’m sitting on my deck, sleeveless, as temps rise through the sixties toward seventy this afternoon. Remember last March? I couldn’t find my deck until some time in late April.

I love the warmth of spring. Unlike the summer, we actually get some sunshine because the leaves on all these trees have yet to obliterate it. Yesterday in the late afternoon, another beautiful day, I went out on the front deck and looked up to find five of the biggest birds I’d ever seen up close perched on the tree that looms over the entire house. (I have the white stains on the wood to prove it.) I think they were turkey hawks (I looked it up; I would not know them on my own). One by one they lifted off with wingspans of three to four feet. My son said they were hunting. I said they were beautiful. It’s easy to see how they can carry off a cat.

And speaking of cats, where have all of our stray cats gone? There was an active ‘catch, neuter and release’ program this year, but if you were a cat, would you return to the scene of your abduction? I think not!

The other night, I’m sure I saw an Eastern Screech Owl zip across the path of my headlights as I came home. I found it particularly amazing because I had just done a reading of Mary Louise Wilson’s “Lost” in which an addled woman sees a “bird! A big, beige bird…” fly past her windshield. It turns out to be the purse she left on the roof of the car, but mine really was a bird! It flew into the woods at a low level, also hunting, I suppose.

Ah, spring… mating and hunting and longer hours of daylight. I have so much to do but, for now, I just want to sit here and breathe.